Voting Rights

Allegra Chapman of Common Cause and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation discuss the House Democratic Election Reform Bill with host Steve Scully on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

"Mr. Whitley has no business being involved with elections, much less serving as Texas' chief election officer," Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, said in a written statement. Common Cause is among the groups that have asked Whitley to withdraw his office's Jan. 25 advisory. "This 'voter purge' was poorly thought out, incompetently implemented and definitely seems to have been more about politics than anything else," he said. "At this point, I think purging Mr. Whitley from the secretary of state's office would be the single best thing we could do for voting rights in Texas."

There’s an old political adage that says, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” Redistricting reform could be California's next big contribution to our political culture.

House watchers suggest that the 116th Congress might also have a chance at denting public corruption. House Resolution 1, the first bill introduced this year, is a sweeping proposal aimed at money in politics, voting reforms and ethics. Those issues have broad bipartisan support in many states and localities, according to Aaron Scherb, legislative affairs director at government watchdog Common Cause. “I think a lot of the reforms at the national level will help advance the ball for when there is a more favorable political climate after 2020,” he says. 

The 2018 elections saw record turnout, with millions of Americans casting ballots to make their voices heard. Yet many faced problems in the voting process before, on and after Election Day — avoidable problems that states and Congress should fix. I saw this firsthand during my time at the Election Protection command center in Washington, D.C., where nonpartisan attorneys and trained volunteers took tens of thousands of calls from citizens across the country. Many of the problems reported were things we could — and did — predict were going to happen. Indeed, most of the problems voters reported can be solved with simple, commonsense reforms.