Voting & Elections

Rural voters may be more vulnerable to harassment because “issues can pop up and they’re not going to be as documented,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, who said she is monitoring efforts by groups in north and south Georgia to recruit potentially armed “concerned citizens” to watch the polls. ... Some voting rights advocates add a note of caution, however. Suzanne Almeida, interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, wants voters to be aware of the issue and know to notify poll workers if they feel intimidated, but she worries they may feel discouraged to vote if they fear widespread intimidation or violence. “We have to make sure that as we’re drawing attention to a problem that we’re not contributing to the problem,” she said. Almeida’s team recruited 2,000 poll monitors in the Keystone State and has run worst-case scenarios for months, focusing efforts on protecting individual voters at as many polling locations as possible.

PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: Dana Abelson spent hours this week calling voters in Florida whose ballots are about to be rejected. DANA ABELSON: Hi. Is Chandramani there? This is Dana. I'm a nonpartisan volunteer with Common Cause. And I was just calling because it seems like your mail-in ballot might have had a problem with the signature.

“There are always problems with every human system, but the good news is that there’s ample time to fix them and voters have plenty of options,” Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner said. “The most important thing is to make a plan to vote now, and then have a back-up plan in case you need it.”

“I would be very happy if it wasn’t not coming down to Pennsylvania, if we were just one of the many states one way or another,” says Suzanne Almeida, a lawyer for the state’s chapter of the watchdog group Common Cause.

“Just as we are making changes to our election laws… to account for COVID, we also need to account for first-time voters or people using this avenue for the first time,” argues Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at the advocacy organization Common Cause.

Today, Federal Communications Commission Chairman (FCC) Ajit Pai issued a statement announcing that the FCC will move forward with a rulemaking to clarify the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The announcement follows an Executive Order from the President and a petition for rulemaking from the Department of Commerce directing the FCC to adopt rules that set conditions on when Section 230 grants social media platforms a liability shield when they moderate content on their sites and when they do not.