Voting Rights

We commend the Virginia Senate for passing SJ18 and strong enabling legislation to establish a redistricting commission that will end gerrymandering of congressional and state legislative districts.

Voter suppression is voter suppression, whether it’s done by purging the voter rolls, turning people away at the ballot box, or feeding them lies to keep them from showing up in the first place. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is failing in its response to address online voter suppression, as are policymakers, and both must take this threat more seriously.The stakes are higher in the 2020 elections, and we expect to see far more disinformation circulated by foreign governments, dark money groups, and online trolls. Maintaining the authentic civic engagement and discourse that underpins a healthy democracy will require stepping up the fight against these new efforts to suppress the vote.

“Our coalition’s attempts to engage the Secretary of State’s office in a process of accountability and transparency have been stonewalled time and again,” Jay Young, Executive Director for Common Cause Illinois, said in a statement. ”’They’ve given us no way to verify the few claims they’ve made about fixing AVR.”

Sylvia Albert, national director of voting and elections at grassroots organization Common Cause, tells Bustle that people who want to get involved in ensuring fair elections can sign up to volunteer with Election Protection, which needs lawyers to answer questions via the nonpartisan voter hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE. If you're not a lawyer, you can still volunteer with Election Protection through its nonpartisan poll monitoring program. "Volunteers commit to taking at least one Election Day shift to stand outside of assigned polling location after receiving training," Election Protection's website states. "You will distribute 'Know Your Rights' cards to voters, answer basic questions from voters at the polls, and help voters resolve any problems that occur, with the help of trained legal professionals."

“The bottom line in Texas is Republicans are scared to death of demographic changes,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause in Texas, “and are doing anything and everything they can think of to keep those changing demographics from affecting elections."

Even though the purge is on hold, the controversy over the last few months may have intimidated people, particularly those who move a lot, and could deter them from voting this year, said Jay Heck, the executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of Common Cause. “If they just hear on the grapevine or through second and thirdhand knowledge that they’re probably not registered to vote any more, because some folks have said they shouldn’t be, then it’s going to have the effect that conservatives want, which is to depress voter turnout amongst that population,” he said.