News Clips

“It’s sort of baffling considering that besides the president, Republicans won up and down the ticket and had record turnout as well,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause. “These are states with Republican election officials and Republican legislatures because these policies have been used by Republican voters that elected those individuals.”

“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.”

As we emerge from the pandemic, access to democracy must remain a priority. Our lives, our families, and our community depend on it. This year’s record turnout shows the pent-up demand of the people for elections that work of all of us.

Julia Vaughn, policy director for the government accountability group Common Cause Indiana said voters faced navigating a variety of deadlines for main-in balloting that a great number had never faced before. “We expect the majority of votes to be cast by mail but we’re not a vote-by-mail state, so we’ve had to make this up as we go along,” Vaughn said.

“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.”

“There are a lot of advocates and community members who thought the bill was signed, a switch was flipped. That we won. In fact, that’s not the case,” said Jay Young of Common Cause Illinois, which backed automatic voter registration. “This is exceptionally frustrating.”