News Clips

Heather Ferguson, director of state operations for the watchdog group Common Cause, said checks distributed 30 days before the election can lead to a public perception problem. “Everyone needs to take a lot of caution in ensuring that the perception is not that there are different tactics being used for electioneering purposes or to influence the vote,” she said. “The perception of a move like this, to send money to voters in the 30 days just preceding an election could certainly raise some suspicions.”

“It’s a really contorted argument to try to say, ‘Hey, we have to throw out this election in this jurisdiction but not for other offices,’” said Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, a nonprofit involved in the arguments before the Supreme Court in Moore.

“We’d like to think that when the voter rolls are cleaned up, it’s the folks who’ve moved, it’s the folks who passed away, but unfortunately, other folks end up getting picked up and purged sometimes by accident,” said Catherine Turcer, director of Common Cause Ohio. The last-minute removal of more than 26,000 voter registrations and the numerous recent changes to voting requirements, Turcer says, “can become really problematic” for voters. “All of these little things combined create a situation where there are more obstacles to voters,” she warned

“It’s part of a pattern we’ve seen over the last decade: right-wing groups and people like Laura Pressley really just weaponizing poll watchers in some really alarming ways,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for expanding voting rights. “They're making it harder for people to vote. They're making it harder for election workers to do their jobs.”

A conflict exists if the passage or failure of the bill would result in the legislator receiving a greater benefit than others in their field, said Aly Belknap, Executive Director of Colorado Common Cause. “Almost all of them have at least one additional financial interest. It can be hard, I think, with so little oversight and capacity to do oversight to draw a clear line between what’s acceptable and what isn’t,” Belknap said.

Ann Webb says the Republican maps amount to a power grab and suppress the voices of voters, especially in Black communities. Webb is policy director with Common Cause North Carolina, a government watchdog group. ANN WEBB: We know that all voters deserve to have their vote count equally, and that is not what these maps do. And it is clear that that was not the intent of the legislative leadership.