Voting & Elections

“The silver lining of this decision from the state Supreme Court is now that we know the rules, we can educate voters about the rules,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a good-government group that works on voter access matters. “And I have every confidence that voters can learn the rules right. There are plenty of ways, plenty of places in election law where we require voters to know specific steps that they need to take. This is just one more of those,” Almeida said.

Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon, says another problem is just the uncertainty of the period. Someone whose home has just burned down doesn’t necessarily know they will be living more than five weeks from now. “A lot of people in this chaotic situation aren’t sure yet where they will be on Election Day,” she says. (Common Cause supports the voter registration deadline being moved to as close as election day so people can re register new addresses as needed.)

"In normal circumstances, election officials find it very difficult to have enough poll workers to run elections," says Sylvia Albert, Director of Voting and Elections at the watchdog group Common Cause. This year, she says, "the problem is exponentially larger."

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, an elections watchdog group, said she believes disruption of the voting process is unlikely, but she shared the concerns of others that the counting process could be at risk. “There are strong laws on voter intimidation,” said Albert. “Counting comes into regular laws around disturbing the police or being in a group; there’s nothing specific on that issue. That’s not to say laws don’t cover it, they do – various laws cover being a nuisance but how that’s interpreted in the situation is going to vary by location.” Albert stressed that she did not believe it was probable there would be altercations at vote-counting sites, but she said: “I’m fearful of violence in a way that I was not in 2000.” “We have seen that the rhetoric on the right, both from the president and Republican lawmakers, has encouraged people to take up arms. And whether directly or indirectly, encouraged violence. And that was not happening from George Bush.”

Today, Facebook announced it would reject political ads that claim victory for a political candidate in the 2020 election before the results are finalized. The pledge follows the social media giant’s pattern of making incremental concessions when its existing policies cause controversies and public outcry.   

Roberts’ institutional concerns were on display during the 2019 term, Common Cause attorney Sylvia Albert said. He was the justice most often in the majority, landing there in 96% of the court’s decided cases and in all but one of the 5-4 or equivalent decisions, a Bloomberg Law analysis shows. “Roberts really tried to thread the needle between the conservative and liberal sides of the bench,” Albert said.