Voting Rights

“You’ve got election officials all over the country and national security officials saying that it was a clean election and the effort to have an unnecessary investigation is just one to kowtow to the base and the president,” said David Vance, a spokesman for the watchdog group Common Cause.

“There are definitely going to be those same efforts, like we saw during the election, to combat what local election administrators are doing to try and innovate to try and make voting more convenient and safer,” said Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group. “Texas is always on the cutting edge of finding new ways to suppress the vote.”

Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan fair-elections advocate, trained and dispatched more than 1,000 volunteers to polling places in 22 counties. Volunteers were asked to report any sightings of voter intimidation or harassment through a group communication app at the end of their shifts. A spokeswoman for the organization said no incidents were reported.

“What we’re seeing in a number of states are clear attempts to either roll back expansions of access to the ballot or add more suppressive measures,” said Sylvia Albert, who runs the voting and elections program at Common Cause.  “What’s happening here is legislatures using propaganda to make changes to election law. Changes to election law should be made very deliberately in concert with election officials in the states, with election experts, with nonpartisan advocacy groups, with security experts,” Albert said. “They are using the president’s rhetoric and all of the undermining of the election as an excuse, and I say excuse because there are no facts to back up what they are saying.”

November is officially in the rear-view mirror, but the election is still in the headlines, and we’re being forced to look back. Why? The will of the people of Pennsylvania is clear and the election outcome will not change. Pennsylvanians turned out in record numbers to vote in this election. Over 6.9 million — or 70.9% — of voting-age Pennsylvanians cast their ballot. Black and brown leaders, organizers, and voters made a herculean effort to ensure that every eligible voter could vote, and every vote was counted. To call the election results into question is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize participation in democracy, especially by Black voters. Here in the commonwealth, we pick our leaders. Our leaders do not pick and choose which voices to listen to and which ones to silence. We have spoken. We’ve elected our next president.

"Once again, this court decision is a win for voters," declared Suzanne Almeida, elections adviser for Common Cause Pennsylvania. "We're glad that this court, also, recognized the lack of evidence and lack of merit in this lawsuit. In America, voters choose our elected officials. Pennsylvania's voters made a collective decision, weeks ago, and that decision needs to be honored."