2023 was a challenging test of New York’s elections. Voters endured persistent legal fights over redistricting and a congressional election scandal that captured national attention. It’s no surprise that trust in government continues to decline nationwide. With changing congressional boundaries and a contentious election season looming, voters face an even busier year.

That’s why lawmakers must work quickly to institute guardrails that address existing gaps in our laws and protect voters from the threat of...

Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, said while no one was hurt, the attempt to poison or kill an election worker is despicable.

"It's to destabilize our elections and to scare the public servants who run them," Mehta Stein pointed out. "And to make all of us more fearful of participating in our democracy."

Mehta Stein blamed the rise in threats to election workers on the litany of false conspiracy theories claiming the 2020 election was rigged.

"We have to find a way...

Джефф Фостер, исполнительный директор Common Cause Massachusetts, заявил, что в Конституции нет правил, определяющих порядок проведения съезда, и никакие гарантии, даже Первая поправка, не будут надежными.

«Если мы откроем этот ящик Пандоры, возникнет огромный риск и потенциальный вред всему, что уже закреплено в нашей Конституции», — предупредил Фостер.

Фостер отметил, что съезд потенциально может позволить неизбранным делегатам и группам особых интересов закрепить свою повестку дня в учредительном документе.

While the Voters Choice Act was never intended to be a panacea for all voting challenges facing California, one thing is very clear: The law is a reform worth revisiting and reinvesting in, and still holds promise for expanding electoral participation across the state and across many voting groups.

Colorado Common Cause, which supported the plaintiffs’ case with an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief before the Colorado Supreme Court, on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court “to set a critical legal precedent to safeguard the future of American democracy.”

“The Supreme Court must embrace its role as an active defender of our Constitution, or else it may crumble under the immense pressure it will surely face in the years to come,” Aly Belknap, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause New York, said that only U.S. citizens can vote in New York state.

"Permanent residents and people authorized to work here are documented and approved by the federal government," Lerner said. "They pay state and federal taxes, and pay into Social Security as well. In many cases, they’ve lived in the United States for decades. There is nothing ‘illegal’ about them."

"Certainly the fact that it is very low-paying, that’s kind of a reflection of the value that has pervaded for a long time in America – that legislatures should be made up of regular citizens or residents of the state or city that they’re representing," said John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. "But we know that it can result in bodies not being necessarily as representative of a community as [they] could be because the lack of pay means that people who don’t have flexible jobs or don’t have a source of...

“This follows the general playbook, the election denier playbook of just pre-emptively laying the groundwork for claims of fraud in the event of a loss,” said Emma Steiner, the Information Accountability Project Manager at Common Cause. “It’s sort of future-proofing.”

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause Texas, said Rinaldi’s legal representation of Wilks was “shocking,” especially in light of the ongoing scandals involving Defend Texas Liberty that Rinaldi has been involved in.

“We all know money equals power in Texas politics and billionaires like the Wilks use their wealth liberally to bend public policy to their liking all the time,” he said. “But it's still pretty shocking.”

“The delegates could write amendments that revoke any of our most cherished rights — like our right to peaceful protest, our freedom of religion, or our right to privacy,” the progressive watchdog group Common Cause warns. Hyperbole? Maybe. The point is we simply don’t know.