Voting Rights

The Secretary of State doesn’t have a firm certification deadline, “so we have plenty of time,” explains Almeida of Common Cause Pennsylvania. “This is just logistically complicated… and sometimes [it] stretches on past the deadline.” It’s not unprecedented to have a handful of counties missing the Nov. 23 deadline, she says, and none are large enough that their results would flip the outcome. Almeida says it’s also currently unclear if counties involved in pending litigation can certify results, but only Allegheny and Philadelphia County are in that position. Those suits concern a handful of votes that wouldn’t impact Biden’s decisive margin of over 80,000, she adds.

And some delays could still happen given the crushing workload election officials faced this year during the pandemic, according to Suzanne Almeida with Common Cause Pennsylvania, a good government group that helps with voter education and monitors election work in the state. “A delay in certification doesn’t necessarily mean there are shenanigans; sometimes it just takes longer to go through all the mechanics to get to certification,” Almeida said.

Wisconsin has already done its own canvas, which was completed Tuesday and added 181 votes to Biden's haul, Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, told reporters in a conference call. It's very rare that a recount changes the outcome of an election, and Biden's 20,608-vote margin of victory in Wisconsin makes it extremely unlikely the state would be awarded to Trump, he said. The Wisconsin recount demand is among a series of efforts the losing Trump campaign has made to challenge the results of the Nov. 3 election, a race Biden won by more than 5.8 million votes nationwide and by a 306-232 Electoral College vote margin. Dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and supporters – ranging from the use of Sharpies to fill out Arizona ballots to unproven claims that Republican observers were not allowed to monitor vote counters – have been rejected by the courts or withdrawn. "There's no merit to the lawsuits being brought by Team Trump," Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation for Common Cause, told reporters in the conference call. "I think we're seeing a good old-fashioned fundraising bait-and-switch scheme."

As we emerge from the pandemic, access to democracy must remain a priority. Our lives, our families, and our community depend on it. This year’s record turnout shows the pent-up demand of the people for elections that work of all of us.

On Thursday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the watchdog group Common Cause submitted a joint letter to Jack Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, requesting Trump’s account be temporarily suspended to prevent the spread of misinformation about the election. “We fear that, in the absence of action by Twitter, the president may be successful in his goal of delegitimizing the integrity of our democratic processes for many, and not just Twitter users but other voters and members of the public, sowing uncertainty about the voting and elections process, and potentially inciting violence against civil servants or others,” the groups wrote. A Twitter spokesperson said the company has received the letter and “intends to respond”.

“We’re all hands on deck right now to make sure that we can get folks who had to vote provisionally, that they’re able to cure their ballots,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, the state’s chapter of the national nonpartisan watchdog group. Most counties are almost done counting their outstanding absentee ballots, she said.  Common Cause Georgia requests lists of provisional voters from individual counties, and then volunteers reach out to those voters via text banking, phone banking or door-to-door knocking to inform them how they can cure their ballots, Dennis explained. On Friday, the organization hopes to reach 3,000 voters who cast provisional ballots, she said. “It’s a big effort, but we want to make sure that every vote in Georgia counts,” Dennis said, adding, “We want to make sure that every voter has equitable access to the ballot and to the balloting process, and every vote is counted in Georgia.” Responding to claims that ballot curing is equivalent to election fraud, Dennis said, “the curing process has been accessible for public viewing, so we definitely want to debunk those claims. That’s just fodder, and there’s no basis to those claims.”