News Clips

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, a government watchdog group, said Ms. Wolfe’s removal would be a major blow to the state, which is likely to once again be a crucial battleground for the presidential race. “The vast majority of Wisconsin’s voters and citizens can and will lose confidence and trust in our elections,” he said.

All of this is a concern for voting rights groups. Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager for Common Cause Texas, said its been just four years since the state attempted to purge tens of thousands of people incorrectly identified as noncitizens from the state's voter rolls. The furor over that effort helped to sink Acting Secretary of State David Whitley's bid for confirmation in the post. Ehresman noted that Keith Ingram, who served as elections director under Whitley, was appointed by current Secretary of State Jane Nelson to head the effort to come up with Texas' replacement for ERIC. "I think that’s something that we’re concerned about, is if these lists matching and list maintenance systems are within that same office, that Texas voters should be paying attention and watchdog organizations like ours are going to be paying attention," Ehresman said. Alicia Pierce said voters should not be overly concerned about being removed from the rolls. "They’re not simply removed," Pierce said. "They receive a notice, and then there’s a waiting period before they are removed. And also, under the National Voting Rights Act, there is a window before federal elections, which is 90 days, when people will not be removed through these wholesale actions, where we’re doing large-scale list maintenance. So those are some things that can help reassure people that they’re not going to be removed in an untimely manner." Still, Katya Ehresman said that voters should doublecheck their voting status well in advance of the October deadline for this fall's elections and the February deadline for the 2024 primaries, in order to make sure they're registered at their current address. "I think that Texas leaving ERIC adds a heightened level of vigilance that is needed on the back of everyday voters, which should not be required to participate in their elections but might need to be now," Ehresman said.

Jay Heck, director of Common Cause, told the Wisconsin Law Journal he believes Vos’ threat of impeachment is hypocritical. “It’s such self-serving hypocrisy with Vos. Where was Vos in 2012 when conservatives all voted to dismiss illegal coordination with Walker and Club For Growth? It has been well documented that Walker engaged in coordination to raise money for his recall election, which was illegal. Candidates cannot coordinate with outside special interests, and the Legislature changed that in 2015, but I didn’t hear Vos, or conservative justices who received funding from Club for Growth, to recuse,” Heck said during an interview with the Wisconsin Law Journal. “It’s selective outrage,” Heck said, noting that Common Cause also held former Democrat Jim Doyle accountable for actions taken during his administration.

Regardless of how the state court rules, plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit plan to proceed with their case, explained Kathay Feng, an attorney and vice president of programs for Common Cause Florida, one of the groups challenging the map. "If they come to a final remedy that is very narrowly focused, there is still an opportunity for the federal case to examine the entire state map as a whole," Feng said. Although plaintiffs suing in state court have agreed to skip a trial, that's not expected to happen in the federal case, Feng said: "We are fully prepared to go to trial in September."

Bolts this week gathered three organizers who have fought this dynamic in each of three states that are undergoing this dynamic: Ohio, Arkansas, and Idaho. Their meeting sparked a wide-ranging conversation about their shared frustrations and strategies. Mia Lewis, associate director of Common Cause Ohio, was active in the campaign to defeat Issue 1 this summer. “This is a great group to be talking to,” Lewis said. “Because they’re not doing this in one state, they do these things repeatedly in different states, so why shouldn’t we strategize?”

“No American is above the law—not even former presidents. The charges that a federal grand jury leveled today against former President Donald Trump are profoundly serious and must go to trial. The charges themselves are unprecedented, but so are the events that led to them. “The nonpartisan January 6 Select Committee revealed the months-long conspiracy to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and its culmination in the deadly insurrection. Anyone and everyone who broke the laws of this nation participating in that conspiracy must be held accountable.” —Marilyn Carpinteyro, interim co-president of Common Cause, on the indictment of former President Donald Trump for felony charges related to the 2020 election.