News Clips

“It’s a state by state fight,” Dan Vicuna, the national redistricting manager of Common Cause, a voting rights organization, told Yahoo News. “In this country, there's a long history of using the redistricting process to discriminate against people of color or to discriminate against voters of one party.” According to voting rights advocates, a wave of racial gerrymandering is impacting maps across the country. The 2020 U.S Census Bureau reported that the overall racial diversity of the United States increased since 2010, and the Black population was the most prevalent in parts of the South. “But just because communities of color may drive population growth, that doesn't mean they have a seat at the table,” Dan Vicuna, the national redistricting manager of Common Cause, a national organization fighting for fair redistricting, told Yahoo News. “Unfortunately, in this country, there's a long history of elected officials in power using that power to either pack Black, Latino, Native American Asian voters into as few districts as possible or alternatively cracking those communities to spread voters throughout a bunch of different districts, so they have no power in any one district.”

"Industry gatekeepers and big-money opposition have done their part to stall Ms. Sohn's confirmation because they know a fully functional FCC would hold them accountable for engaging in discriminatory and anticompetitive practices," former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, now special adviser to advocacy group Common Cause, said yesterday.

“At first glance, it comes across as neutral, but it seems clear it hamstrings OCE,” said Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause. “Without a full slate, then they can’t really take actions. Another provision says they have to make hiring decisions within the first 30 days, but they can’t do that without a full slate of board members.” 

"We also know hearing what the opposition is talking about that they are going to be hitting every state that they can think of," Viki Harrison, director of Constitutional Convention and Protecting Dissent Programs at Common Cause, told Insider. Harrison and others involved in trying to thwart the movement have said that the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has fundamentally changed how Americans respond to this issue. While the high court has no role in a convention, Harrison said people are now aware that major changes to fundamental rights can occur. "We're talking about rights about Americans have taken for granted," Harrison said. "I think that is what has woken the public up and why I am talking to way more about this this year than last year ."

The agreement came more than three years after two watchdog groups, Common Cause and the Campaign Legal Center, filed formal complaints about a July 2019 fundraising email for Kobach’s U.S. Senate campaign. Kobach, who is a polarizing advocate of tough immigration measures, lost the Republican primary for an open U.S. Senate seat in August 2020.

Common Cause Minnesota Executive Director Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera said narrow DFL margins could also doom election law changes. “Now that the Democrats have the House and the Senate, wow, easy peasy, we're just going to roll with all of these reforms, that's not going to be the case,” Belladonna-Carrera said. “There are still intra-caucus dynamics, there is over-promising. And only five months in the legislative session.”