News Clips

"Mr. Santos' breathtaking scope of lies has left his constituents -- and all New Yorkers -- gasping for air and calling for accountability. Now that the Eastern District of New York has appropriately indicted him, Mr. Santos should resign. It's been clear for a long time that the voters have been defrauded, and Mr. Santos' seat in Congress is tantamount to an ill gotten gain: he should not be allowed to profit from the fruits of his deception. Voters deserve a representative who doesn't lie and deceive their way into power, and unfortunately they have waited too long for Mr. Santos to do the right thing and resign," Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY said.

Common Cause NC, an open government advocacy group, has pushed for legislation to require 24 hours between the time a bill has been introduced and the time it goes to committee and at least 24 hours before a bill goes to a floor vote. “We didn’t even have 12 hours with this bill — and it was a 40-page-long bill,” Jane Pinsky, a program director with Common Cause, said. “It’s impossible to expect a legislator to do their job if they have 10 minutes to read a 40-page bill.” Pinsky said that people, regardless of their opinion on abortion, should be concerned when there isn’t openness and transparency in the legislative process. “This is supposed to be a deliberative process,” she said. “It is not supposed to be a rushed process.”

“Because Twitter is dropping the ball on verification, the burden will fall on voters to double check that the information they are consuming and sharing is legitimate,” said Jill Greene, voting and elections manager for Common Cause Pennsylvania.

The Supreme Court cannot be its own referee. Justices have tried and failed repeatedly at that. We should expect all public officials to abide by high ethical standards when conducting the people’s business -- with no exceptions.

“It’s just such an unregulated sphere that I think it poses challenges to all three pillars of our campaign finance law,” said Stephen Spaulding, a campaign finance expert at Common Cause.  “We know that its value is what it is on the day it’s received by the campaign, but then its value can fluctuate wildly and be manipulated in a way that redounds to the benefit of the campaign,” Spaulding said. “We have contribution limits in place for a reason, to guard against corruption and the appearance of corruption,” Spaulding said.

“It’s great to see Senator Golden offering an alternative that could create meaningful limits and doesn’t create a way to bypass that,” said Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon, which partners with Honest Elections. However, she noted that past negotiations with Democrats have fallen short. Two measures fell by the wayside in 2021: House Bill 3343, sponsored by now-U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, and House Bill 2680, a weaker proposal spearheaded by Rayfield.