News Clips

"The fact that Amendment 4 was overwhelmingly supported by Floridians let them know that Floridians have an interest in the way they're being governed," said Anjenys Gonzalez-Eilert, Florida executive director of Common Cause, the nonpartisan democracy watchdog.. "Citizens don't want to have their voices silenced, they want to participate. If you want to be the sole source of power, that would rub you the wrong way."

“Technology is a tool not a process. This recount concept is not ready for prime time,” said Liza McClenaghan, Common Cause Florida state board chair. Both Common Cause and the League of Women Voters say the technology offers promise as a way to give supervisors of elections another tool to store and track paper ballots, but they say the state’s rush to encourage counties to start using digital images of ballots for recounts is a mistake. “The proposal that the digital image generated by the software is trustworthy while the paper ‘may’ be consulted is ludicrous,’’ McClenaghan of Common Cause said.

"As long as Team Bloomberg doesn't talk to Team Biden about what it's doing -- how it's spending Bloomberg's fortune to support Biden -- it's not subject to any limits at all," said Paul Ryan, a veteran campaign-finance lawyer who is now vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause.

Paul Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, said he saw the vows by candidates at the start of the race to disavow big money as more about messaging than substance. “This is where we have been at in every cycle since super PACs were born,” he said. “I was skeptical of the promises at the outset. I thought whoever the Democratic nominee is will be supported by huge outside money.” Even Sanders is getting help from outside groups. The super PAC affiliated with the National Nurses United union spent heavily on his behalf in 2016 and may do so again. And Common Cause has filed a federal complaint against the nonprofit Sanders helped found, Our Revolution, charging it with violating existing laws — weak as they are — requiring disclosure of donor identities and spending related to helping a candidate.

“I absolutely think that these ads are deceptive,” said Keshia Morris Desir, the census project manager for government watchdog organization Common Cause. Morris Desir acknowledged that the ads also clearly affiliate themselves with Trump’s campaign, but said they were still misleading. “Although they also say things like ‘Help Trump Win’ — I definitely think that the fact that you name this as a census at the same time that the 2020 census bureau will be sending similar communications for folks to fill out their census form is unfortunate.”

“Bloomberg can keep his offices open and his staff employed--all to support Biden--with Bloomberg continuing to pay for it, but the work needs to be done independently of the Biden campaign,” Paul S. Ryan of nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause told ABC News. “In other words, Bloomberg can run a pro-Biden super PAC, using his campaign office space and campaign staff. Bloomberg's pro-Biden effort staff couldn't coordinate it's spending with the Biden campaign.” “What Bloomberg can not do is simply merge his team and offices with the Biden campaign, with Bloomberg continuing to pay for the operations. That would be an illegally-large in-kind contribution,” he said.