News Clips

Sarah Goff, the associate director of Common Cause, the good government group, said that the problem with broken scanners was like “a giant paper jam citywide.” ... Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause, said that the two-sheet ballot was a mistake. “It’s complicated,” she said. “It puts unnecessary pressure on the machine.”

"Gerrymandering is an abuse of power no matter who does it, and both Democrats and Republicans use it for their political gain," said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director for the Common Cause advocacy group.

"We see strong support for these initiatives from independents, Democrats and Republicans," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. "The question is whether incumbent officials will wake up to understand that people really do want democracy and that power belongs to the people."

"You can't run democracy on the cheap," said Jenny Flanagan, vice president for state operations with Common Cause. "We have to invest in our democracy to make our elections work."

“In California, we had a system where politicians went behind closed doors and decided where the lines were drawn and ended up hurting communities — communities of color, women interested in running, people in the way of an incumbent,” said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director of Common Cause, noting the issue was long seen as “an insider game, that no one was paying attention to, and we were told that it’s so complicated and regular people can’t understand it. But that’s not true.”

“We are dealing with a very different climate in 2018,” said Karen Flynn, the president of Common Cause. “We do not have a Department of Justice that is working hand in hand with our network to be solving these problems, we don’t have the protections of the Voting Rights Act, and we have a president that is putting out messages that can feel threatening to many voters.”