Media Center

Today, Common Cause and the Campaign Legal Center filed an amici brief in Washington State’s King County Superior Court in Elster v. City of Seattle in support of the city’s campaign finance voucher program. The brief makes clear that the Seattle program is consistent with a host of other citizen-funded elections programs upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court since campaign finance reforms were enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandals to curb the buying and selling of influence in the halls of government.

Governor Rick Snyder was quick to sign two bills today that will increase the influence of special interests in Michigan. SB 335 and SB 336 are unacceptable attacks on the democratic process by expanding the damage from the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2010 Citizens United decision in Michigan. Common Cause had organized its 30,000 Michigan members to email and call Gov. Snyder, urging him to veto the bills.

Last night, the General Assembly passed important legislation to increase security of Rhode Island elections with post-election audits to ensure the accuracy of vote counts. The bills, once they are signed by Governor Gina Raimondo who has publicly supported them, will phase in the use of an innovative procedure called risk-limiting post-election audits. These audits serve as a check on the initial machine counts reported on election night, and confirm that our election results are correct.

Common Cause and registered voters from Florida, Texas, and New York, filed a complaint against Kris Kobach, Vice-Chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, to halt his unprecedented and unlawful investigation into individual American voters.

The Virginia State Board of Elections voted this afternoon to retire voting machines that have been identified as vulnerable to manipulation and tampering and will shift to the use of paper ballots statewide before the November election. Common Cause and other groups had urged the board to retire the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, before the upcoming election because they do not produce a durable paper record of votes. Computer scientists have long advised that paper ballots should be used for voting because they are not digital and therefore cannot be altered by malware.

Potential voters temporarily displaced by Hurricane Irma, can print out voter registration applications online and mail them to their Supervisors of Elections. If they are postmarked by Monday, September 11, the application can still be processed for these elections. The Supervisor of Elections Offices will not be open on Monday, September 11.