News Clips

It looks like Ramsey would qualify for both benefits, according to Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director with the consumer group Common Cause. “The eligibility criteria for this program is pretty broad,” he said. Getachew added that individuals automatically qualify if they’re in a government program like SNAP or Medicaid. Ramsey is enrolled in Medicaid, so she’s eligible. One can also qualify if their income is at or below 135% of the federal poverty line, or if their income took a substantial hit from a job loss.

Sylvia Albert, director of the voting and elections program at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the proposal threatens the autonomy of the judicial branch. “It is a warning to judges that if you don’t vote the way we want, we will expel you,” she said. “It is basically an attempt to eliminate the balance of powers among the three branches of government.”

“We have a roadmap as to how [McConnell] has operated in the past, which is to be a one-man blockade,” said Stephen Spaulding, a senior counsel at Common Cause, a liberal government reform group. “He will abuse the filibuster rule to demand supermajority votes on nearly every piece of the majority’s agenda. I think we can anticipate that.”

“It seems like there’s a coordinated effort to limit access to the ballot, and it’s not something we need after so many gains” in voting options last year, said Aunna Dennis, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, a government accountability organization. “We’re definitely going to be on the defensive.”

“Republican lawmakers in a variety of states are using the president's lies as justification for making voting harder and suppressing the vote,” Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at the nonpartisan voting rights group Common Cause, told ABC News. “Obviously we saw record turnout everywhere and part of that was because access to the ballot was expanded. And obviously nothing is perfect. We would want improvements and improvements should be made, with consultation with election officials and election security experts and advocates in the community, but that's not what we're seeing. What we're seeing is legislatures adopting the president's lies about there being problems with the election,” Albert added, referring to unsubstantiated claims about voting machines changing votes, fraudulent signature matching processes and other baseless claims promoted by the president.

Our democracy has endured wars, pandemics, natural disasters and now a lawless president. And despite that, next year will likely bring more unexpected challenges that we’ll confront as a nation. We nonetheless must be thankful for what we have, as imperfect as our system is. Change has often been cyclical, and following the scandals of the Trump administration, we may soon have a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If one thing is clear, it’s that we’re on the doorstep of passing a comprehensive reform package to put “we the people” back in charge of our democracy.