Abuse of Power

"Today's ruling is a relief to many Texans who qualify to vote absentee," Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, said. "Most of these voters have disabilities and are elderly. With only one ballot return site per county, these voters would have faced challenges in travel that might have made it impossible for them to vote."

Having her pay for an ad campaign “in my opinion would be an illegally large in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign,” said Paul S. Ryan, the vice president for policy and litigation at the good-government group Common Cause. Even if she were just to appear in an ad, without funding it, there would be a value to Ms. Manigault Newman’s time that would almost certainly exceed the $2,800 federal contribution limit, Mr. Ryan said.

"It's more important to ensure that every vote counts than knowing the results on election night," Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause, told Insider. "We do expect that part of [Trump]'s playbook is to question the integrity of mail-in voting, which we know can be done safely...we need to be giving time for those votes to be counted."

“Many of the Texans who qualify to vote absentee have disabilities and are elderly, and they rely on public transportation,” Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas said in a statement. “With only one drop-off site per county, these voters would face challenges in travel that might make it impossible for them to vote. The drop-off site limit will also make the one site in each country prone to lines and crowds, endangering voters' health.”

Today, Common Cause Texas and the Anti-Defamation League’s Austin, Southwest, and Texoma Regions (“ADL”) filed suit to block the governor of Texas from limiting drop-off sites for absentee ballots to a maximum of one per county during the state’s early voting period, regardless of the size of a county’s population or the distribution of that population. The plaintiffs argue that this order – which Governor Greg Abbott issued by proclamation on October 1 – exceeds his authority and would make it unreasonably difficult for eligible Texans to use ballot by mail.

Today, Common Cause and the Arab American Institute sent a joint letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates (“CPD”) calling for mechanisms in future debates designed to combat the spread of election disinformation and promote trust in our democratic process.