Washington, DC—This afternoon, a panel of Common Cause’s national policy experts and state leaders briefed the media on the state of voting nationally and in Ohio, Texas, and Florida. 

If you missed today’s media briefing, you can view the recording here. 

Our next briefing is at 5pm ET. To register, click here.  

Select quotes from the briefing, in order of speakers, are below. 

Regarding national Election Day trends:
“What we’re seeing today is really what we see in every election, isolated incidents of some problems where polling places may not have opened on time because somebody didn’t have a key or there wasn’t an extension cord, or maybe there were difficulties using new types of machinery. But we’ve also seen election officials respond quickly and not seen any widespread issues as of right now,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause. 

Regarding misinformation and disinformation on social media: 
“We’re largely seeing these [disinformation] narratives originate from places like Telegram and then spread to more mainstream and more widely used networks. This is usually what happens when people are brought into these types of conspiratorial thinking about elections through a mainstream platform and then end up organizing and learning more about it on fringe platforms, or they take these ideas from the fringe platform and go to the mainstream platform,” said Emma Steiner, disinformation analyst with Common Cause. 

Regarding the state of voting in Ohio:
“In Ohio, it’s the usual kind of questions that we’ve been getting like ‘what’s my polling location? What’s the appropriate ID in Ohio?’ It looks like people are enthusiastically voting today and out there,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio. 

Regarding voter intimidation at the polls in Texas:
“We have heard of a handful of instances where individuals, whether they be partisan actors or poll watchers that were hired by campaigns or parties, are feeling more emboldened to be within 100-foot-line of polling locations and questioning voters as they go into polling locations. But we’ve been able to work with election officials and respond to these issues in a way that voters can cast a ballot without risk of intimidation,” said Katya Ehresman, organizer with Common Cause Texas. 

Regarding opposition by Florida officials to federal civil rights monitors:
“Florida election officials should welcome federal civil rights monitors from the U.S Department of Justice instead of trying to keep them outside of polling places in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. These monitors from the federal justice department are there to ensure that people’s voting rights are respected and upheld, with similar teams of monitors were sent to 64 counties nationally during this election,” said Amy Keith, program director of Common Cause Florida.   

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