Voting & Elections

Also Wednesday, Common Cause, a government-accountability watchdog group, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Trump and others broke federal laws by communicating with officials in Georgia “in an effort to fraudulently and corruptly overturn 2020 presidential election results in Georgia,” according to a letter sent to Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine in Atlanta and Merrick Garland, who was confirmed Wednesday by the Senate to serve as U.S. Attorney General.

A month after Common Cause Georgia called on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to refer to the federal DOJ his investigation of President Donald Trump’s January 2nd phone call with Raffensperger, Common Cause has filed its own complaint with the DOJ. The complaint, filed today, urges the DOJ to investigate whether Trump, Senator Lindsey Graham, Rudolph W. Giuliani and others violated multiple federal laws by attempting to overturn presidential election results in Georgia via the hour-long Jan. 2 phone call to Raffensperger and other events and communications with Georgia officials.

"We're talking purple states, where legislatures feel a little bit of voter suppression can guarantee them an election," Sylvia Albert, director of the voting and elections program at Common Cause, told Newsweek. "We're talking states with Republican trifectas for the most part, because while there might be some concern over what's happening in Michigan, we feel that the Democratic governor would veto bills that would infringe on people's right to vote." "The challenge that we're seeing is an overhaul of our election system without critical foresight into what the impact could be," Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told Newsweek. "Right now, we see that Republicans are trying to find a solution to a problem that literally does not exist here."

“These bills are intentionally, horrifically, anti-voter,” Aunna Dennis, the Georgia president of the good-government group Common Cause, said in a statement. “When the 2022 election comes around, we won’t be able to vote in the ways we have used for the past 15 years—and it will be perfectly clear who’s responsible for rolling back the hands of time and returning Georgia to the Jim Crow era status quo of voter suppression.”

Sylvia Albert, director of the voting and elections program at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the proposal threatens the autonomy of the judicial branch. “It is a warning to judges that if you don’t vote the way we want, we will expel you,” she said. “It is basically an attempt to eliminate the balance of powers among the three branches of government.”

"Those who won the election, who have the majority are going to be faced with a choice: do they protect voting rights or do they protect the filibuster rule?" said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy & senior adviser at Common Cause. "I don't think saying, 'Oh, but the filibuster,' is going to cut it." As for what Mr. Biden can do, the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in October 2020 that the president could improve cybersecurity and direct more federal agencies to offer voter registration. Spaulding said that the president could also provide more resources for the Justice Department to enforce the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and other voting rights legislation. He applauded the White House for supporting the bill and said the administration needs to "really use the bully pulpit" to help pass legislation.