Voting Rights

“2016 proved that foreign governments have much to gain from meddling in our elections,” said Liza McClenaghan, chairwoman of the Florida board of voting advocacy group Common Cause. “More attacks are on the way.”

The history of denying incarcerated people the right to vote is rooted in the history of African American voter suppression. And while restoring that right is gaining traction in the 2020 campaign, Tierra Bradford says many Democratic hopefuls still don’t get the point.

“On Election Day, we fielded too many calls from voters who had cast ballots in previous elections but were suddenly told that they were no longer in the system,” said Sara Henderson, executive director for Common Cause Georgia. “We will closely monitor the state's compliance with this new statutory requirement.”

Governor Brian Kemp today signed into law HB 392, which has a provision requiring Georgia’s secretary of state to take steps to shore up the security of the state’s voter registration database. The move comes just weeks after Gov. Kemp signed HB 316, which included new protections for Georgia voters who are required to cast provisional ballots. These bills were passed in direct response to a lawsuit brought on behalf of Common Cause Georgia by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, along with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison LLP, and Sugarman LLP.

Today, Fair Elections Center and Pines Bach LLP filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, on behalf of Common Cause in Wisconsin and individual plaintiff Ben Quintero, challenging Wisconsin’s unnecessary requirements for student IDs to qualify as voter ID.

Liza McClenaghan of government watchdog group Common Cause Florida said lawmakers should mandate what are called risk-limiting audits prior to the certification of election results. “This gives more confidence to the election process as observed by the voters,” McClenaghan said.