News Clips

“It’s important for the sake of democracy for people who break campaign finance and other laws to be held accountable even if they’ve spent four years as president,” said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance litigator at the nonpartisan nonprofit Common Cause.

Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan fair-elections advocate, trained and dispatched more than 1,000 volunteers to polling places in 22 counties. Volunteers were asked to report any sightings of voter intimidation or harassment through a group communication app at the end of their shifts. A spokeswoman for the organization said no incidents were reported.

“What we’re seeing in a number of states are clear attempts to either roll back expansions of access to the ballot or add more suppressive measures,” said Sylvia Albert, who runs the voting and elections program at Common Cause.  “What’s happening here is legislatures using propaganda to make changes to election law. Changes to election law should be made very deliberately in concert with election officials in the states, with election experts, with nonpartisan advocacy groups, with security experts,” Albert said. “They are using the president’s rhetoric and all of the undermining of the election as an excuse, and I say excuse because there are no facts to back up what they are saying.”

The ranks of policy experts and influencers run deep in Washington, but these are the people who stand out for delivering results for their clients in the halls of Congress and in the administration. Grassroots Lobbyists: Karen Hobert Flynn and Aaron Scherb, Common Cause 

November is officially in the rear-view mirror, but the election is still in the headlines, and we’re being forced to look back. Why? The will of the people of Pennsylvania is clear and the election outcome will not change. Pennsylvanians turned out in record numbers to vote in this election. Over 6.9 million — or 70.9% — of voting-age Pennsylvanians cast their ballot. Black and brown leaders, organizers, and voters made a herculean effort to ensure that every eligible voter could vote, and every vote was counted. To call the election results into question is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize participation in democracy, especially by Black voters. Here in the commonwealth, we pick our leaders. Our leaders do not pick and choose which voices to listen to and which ones to silence. We have spoken. We’ve elected our next president.

“I’m not the first to say this in a farewell address, and I won’t be the last, but the Senate is broken,” Mr. Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, said on Tuesday in what is likely his final speech after 12 years in the deeply divided institution. “The Senate is broken,” he repeated for emphasis. For months, Americans have watched in anger as Congress remained mired in partisan paralysis over more pandemic relief, allowing unemployment benefits to lapse as many suffer from joblessness. Fewer people approve of the job lawmakers are doing in Washington than at almost any time in recent history. And the government watchdog group Common Cause ranked the current Congress the “least productive in history,” noting that only about 1 percent of bills introduced became law. Mr. Udall emphasized this dysfunctional state of affairs on the floor, calling on senators to gut the legislative filibuster — which effectively requires a 60-vote supermajority to advance any major legislation — and change a culture he said valued partisanship over the country’s best interests.