News Clips

The 2020 election and its aftermath revealed the dangers posed to our democracy by disinformation. We saw how President Trump used social media platforms to assemble and incite the mob on the Ellipse on January 6th and then turn it loose on the Capitol where Congress was at work certifying the election victory of his opponent. The results were shocking, and they were tragic, and they could easily have been far worse. We must ensure they are not repeated in 2022, or 2024, or ever again.

Our communities face urgent issues. Across Oregon, we struggle with the disparate impacts of an ongoing pandemic, wildfire displacement, economic hardship, racism and more. We desperately need elected leaders who understand these struggles firsthand – those who come from impacted communities themselves and who share our lived experiences. But who can afford to run for office? And if elected, who can afford to serve in office?

“There’s so little trust that there has to be an environment of complete and utter transparency,” said Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause PA, a nonprofit government watchdog group.   “What we’re seeing with these situations — because of the campaign finance laws, donor disclosure, the wide-open structure of lobbying disclosure — there are a number of ways to circumvent the laws,” Mr. Ali said.

Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization, said all congressional candidates should follow the law about personal financial disclosures — especially in a race as close as the one for Ohio's 9th Congressional District. "It allows voters to consider the statements the candidates make, it allows voters to consider any conflicts of interest," Turcer said. "Transparency allows voters to be educated … and to know what each of the candidates are all about and how responsible they are."

“There’s definitely disproportionate involvement of single-candidate super PACs this cycle,” Aaron Scherb of government watchdog Common Cause observed. “These groups tend to have a small number of donors, and they often silence and drown out the voices of small donors and everyday voters.” “Often these donors want something in return,” he said. ... “There’s definitely more danger of a quid pro quo with these groups,” Scherb said. “At the very least it creates the perception of corruption, which in many ways can be just as damaging.”

This decision may have consequences for voters in 2022, said Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group. (Common Cause supports PolitiFact's Spanish fact-checking in 2022.) Many people still believe the 2020 election was stolen, and candidates have been sharing that message. "By not combating this, they're helping fuel the narrative that this big lie was accurate, when it's not," said Getachew. Emma Steiner, a disinformation researcher at Common Cause, said she still sees unmarked tweets falsely claiming that mail ballot drop boxes aren’t safe. (Drop boxes are secure boxes, often placed outside polling sites or government buildings, into which voters can drop completed ballots received by mail. The boxes often have more security features than standard mailboxes and have been used in some jurisdictions for decades).  Platforms don’t share data proactively, Steiner said, so it’s hard to gauge exactly how many posts with election-related falsehoods get sent around. It took PolitiFact about 30 seconds in the Twitter search tool — trying terms like "ballot mules" and "dead voters" — to find multiple false claims about elections.