Voting Rights

A new report from Common Cause examines the serious and growing threat posed by disinformation in the 2024 election. “Storm Watch: Protecting Voters from Disinformation in the 2024 Election” outlines what we have seen and what we anticipate in the months leading up to November 5, and beyond. The report points to the continuing critical need to combat election disinformation at a time when artificial intelligence (AI) has become more accessible and social media platforms have drastically reduced efforts to control the expanding threat to our democracy.

Today, 44 organizations representing the National Voting in Prison Coalition sent a letter to members of the House of Representatives urging them to co-sponsor the Inclusive Democracy Act (IDA), legislation to end felony disenfranchisement in federal elections for individuals completing their sentence inside and outside of prison and jail. The IDA was introduced earlier this year by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-7). Currently, the IDA has 23 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and is awaiting a hearing.

Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas, noted that some states reward schools that register students. Tennessee acknowledges schools that reach a certain voter registration threshold, and Pennsylvania has a governor’s civic engagement award to celebrate schools that register 85% of eligible students to vote, for example. Common Cause also recommends that the secretary of state’s office mail each school voter registration applications, instead of requiring schools to request them twice a year.

Today, Common Cause filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of the United States urging the court to decide Donald J. Trump v. United States expeditiously in order to avoid perceptions of political bias and to allow a lower court trial of the former president on conspiracy and corruption charges to be held before the November presidential election.

"For those of us who’ve worked in Texas politics for years, it was a huge deal because you almost never see a gubernatorial appointee fail to get confirmed by the state senate," Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a voting advocacy group, told PolitiFact. "It goes to show just how wildly false their claim of 95,000 non-citizens being on the voter rolls was that it resulted in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature refusing to confirm the nomination of the Republican governor."

“In the April elections Wisconsin tends to have low turnout, and not many people are going to look at these [closely]. Maybe they’ll read it and think, ‘yeah, that sounds reasonable,’” Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, the state’s branch of the national nonpartisan government watchdog group, said ahead of the results. “But they are both the product of election denial.” Their impact could be notable, Heck suggested. With avenues for additional funding roped off, and with the scope of who can volunteer as poll workers narrowed, the possibility of additional conspiracy theories and chaos during and following another close race this fall — the state’s past two presidential elections were both decided by fewer than 23,000 votes — could be more likely. “Unless the Legislature fully funds election administration, which the Republican-controlled Legislature never has done and never will do, then this leaves election clerks all over the state of Wisconsin without the resources to run elections” well, he said.