News Clips

“On Election Day, we fielded too many calls from voters who had cast ballots in previous elections but were suddenly told that they were no longer in the system,” said Sara Henderson, executive director for Common Cause Georgia. “We will closely monitor the state's compliance with this new statutory requirement.”

And critics like Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization focused on holding government accountable, say that just because the information is public, it doesn’t mean it should be made available in this manner.

“The tragedy of it all is that the communities that are the hardest to count are the ones that are yearning to be seen by their government,” said Georgia Logothetis, assistant director of the nonprofit group Common Cause Illinois, which works on democracy, voting rights and gerrymandering issues. "We’re talking children, people living below the poverty line, minorities and immigrants,” Logothetis added. “For every 1% of people that were not counted in the last census, Illinois lost $122 million in health and human services funding.” Illinois could also have less representation and political power, as the state stands to lose one or two congressional seats if under-counted in next year’s census. “This is a true chance for every single person to be counted,” Logothetis said. “In the eyes of the government, if you don’t respond to the census, you don’t exist.”

“They’re not looking to the future and what’s moving around elections and the rest of the states,” said Liza McClenaghan, state chairwoman of Common Cause Florida. “They’re only interested in trying to fix the things from 2018.” That said, McClenaghan is generally supportive of the legislation pushed by Ingoglia and Baxley given the potential significance of every “glitch” in Florida’s election laws.

"The citizenship question is a bald-faced attempt to racially rig the census, undercount communities of color and undermine fair representation which our democracy relies upon," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan public interest group.

Liza McClenaghan of government watchdog group Common Cause Florida said lawmakers should mandate what are called risk-limiting audits prior to the certification of election results. “This gives more confidence to the election process as observed by the voters,” McClenaghan said.