News Clips

Anne Gray Herring of Common Cause Georgia said SB 222 creates another deterrent for counties already struggling to recruit and retain election workers. "Our county elections offices are already overburdened and underfunded," Gray Herring said. "This would cut off one of the few remaining means to receive additional funding and prohibit boards of commissioners from choosing to allocate funds to their county elections offices when they identify a need. The county governing authority should have the discretion to provide additional funding as they see fit."

“Now the legislative defendants play a cynical game, hoping that this newly constituted court will reverse course and abdicate its fundamental duty of judicial review,” said Lali Madduri, an attorney speaking Tuesday in court for Common Cause, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters and citizens like Harper.

Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager for Common Cause Texas, said everyone knows a voter, a friend or a neighbor who could be affected by the pending legislation. Ehresman said that in some scenarios a person might attempt to vote absentee by mail because they’re 65 or they’re disabled. If they can’t tell whether their ballot was received and are confused about whether their vote was counted, they might try to go vote in person and cast a provisional ballot. “That voter could be liable under SB 2 for a felony penalty” because they were aware they had already cast a ballot by mail, Ehresman said. “Especially if their mail-in ballot was counted that same day. That’s one kind of concern that we potentially see with SB 2.”

The government accountability group Common Cause Texas called the move "another attempt to scare voters away from the ballot box by sewing doubt in the integrity of our elections." "Either this is a hasty move in response to partisan pressure, which should be discouraged from the Secretary of State's office, or it is a deceitful omission that should be looked at skeptically," Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager for the organization said in a news release. "Texas should focus on strengthening the security of our elections, not removing systems, like ERIC, that ensure checks and balances especially given the SOS office's history with illegal voter purges."

The verdict has powerful implications for Ohio and the rest of the country because it shows that while Citizens United may have opened the floodgates of corporate cash, “that doesn’t mean that pay-to-play is legal or right,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio and a longtime Ohio advocate of campaign finance and government reform. “Ohioans can rest easy tonight knowing, that at long last, someone will be held accountable,” she said.

"Senate treatment of this nomination has been, from beginning to end, sad, shoddy, and shameful. And its treatment of Ms. Sohn a despicable dereliction of duty and honor. A win for big-spending special interests, to be sure, but a tragic loss for the common good," wrote former FCC chair Michael Copps wrote. who now works for the advocacy group Common Cause