News Clips

Yosef Getachew, director of the Media and Democracy Program at Common Cause, said in a statement Monday that "the harmful disinformation OANN spreads has had real-world impacts on democracy and public health, from the violent insurrection on our Capitol to the death and suffering of so many who were misinformed by the network's coverage of the pandemic." "AT&T must be held accountable for its role in building and bankrolling OANN," Getachew added, "and DirecTV must no longer carry this dangerous disinformation network."

Eight months after Inauguration Day, one-third of Americans told pollsters they still believed Donald Trump actually won the election and that Joe Biden stole it away from the incumbent. A new report offers a mix of government and corporate reforms to limit the spread and influence of such election disinformation. The Common Cause Education Fund, an affiliate of the democracy reform advocacy group Common Cause, issued a report in late October reviewing the state of disinformation campaigns and a series of recommendations designed to stem the tide. "Just as we came together last year, rising up to vote safely and securely in record numbers during a global pandemic, we must now rise up to stop election disinformation efforts in future elections," the researchers wrote.

“This is a good decision, not just for the people, but also we think for the Legislature itself; for real, thoughtful decision making,” said Sandy Ma, the executive director of Common Cause Hawaii, one of the two groups that filed the lawsuit. Bills became law without lawmakers and the public having sufficient opportunity to understand and debate their contents when the Legislature used “gut and replace,” Ma said. The ruling will restore trust in the legislative process because sometimes people think lawmakers have engaged in horse trading when a bill has been gutted and replaced without public discussion, Ma said.

“We have also seen and documented the social media companies’ failures in their public commitment to prevent the spread of disinformation about elections – failures echoed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen,” said Jesse Littlewood, Common Cause Vice President for Campaigns and one of the authors of the report. “The current state of affairs is nothing short of dangerous and the time is now for comprehensive reforms.”

“For 20 years I’ve been looking at the issue through the other end of the telescope, at ‘dark money’ nonprofits trying to hide that they’re influencing politics,” Paul S. Ryan, general counsel for campaign finance watchdog Common Cause, said. “This is the opposite—these PACs appear to be trying to pass themselves off as nonprofits and trying to hide that by spending on the political end. It raises the same concern, though, because in both cases they mislead the government about the use of contributions. And that’s where these scam PACs may be running afoul of the law.” He pointed out that the sudden change in reporting suggests the groups are either mischaracterizing the nature of their spending now, or had been mischaracterizing it for years previously. “It’s illegal to mislead the government,” he said. “And donors should never be lied to.” Ryan also noted that “it also sounds like we very well could be talking about a federal wire fraud statute violation,” citing the fact that every one of the more than two dozen donors contacted by The Daily Beast over the course of the last year said they had been deceived.

Those who are manufacturing doubts about our election results have a strong profit motive: they need to keep the doubts alive to keep the dollars flowing.  But the rest of us can stop falling for their scam, and stop subsidizing these unfounded attacks on America’s elections.