Media Center

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.

Today Common Cause filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that one or more unknown foreign nationals made expenditures, independent expenditures or disbursements in connection with the 2016 presidential election in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act.

President Trump’s ‘Election Integrity’ Commission is a flawed vehicle designed to provide cover for outrageous and unsubstantiated claims made by the President as an excuse for why he lost the popular election a new report from Common Cause, “Flawed from the Start,” documents. When compared to other recent high-profile commissions convened to improve our voting and elections process, the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is unique in that it is heavily stacked with noted vote suppressors.

Today’s revelations that fake accounts in Russia bought approximately $150,000 in political ads on Facebook demands a complete and immediate response from the Federal Election Commission. The Commission’s intransigence on the issue of curbing the threat of foreign influence in our elections must stop now as this is likely only the tip of the iceberg.

Late yesterday, Common Cause filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford in support of plaintiffs’ challenge to Wisconsin’s partisan gerrymander which was ruled unconstitutional by a federal three-judge panel. Common Cause also played a key role in coordinating amici in the case.