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Voting & Elections 11.2.2022

Newsweek: How MAGA Election Watchers Are Scaring Away Voters

Suzanne Almeida, the director of state operations at nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause, agreed. "It's obviously something we're concerned about. Everyone has the right to vote free from intimidation [...] but this isn't a national wave of people who are armed at ballot boxes," Almeida told Newsweek. "As we are talking about it, if we are thinking there are armed people at drop boxes everywhere, it's going to make it less likely for voters to vote," she said. That is "doing the job of the folks who want to be intimidating for them." ... Almeida said if the ballot drop box a voter wants to use doesn't feel safe, they should head to a different one. She said it is likely too close to Election Day to post a ballot in the mail, but that in many states, people can turn it in at elections offices. "In several states, there's also a process where you can surrender your vote by mail or absentee ballot and then vote in person on Election Day, if that feels safer," she said.

Voting & Elections 11.1.2022

New York Times: Letters, Tweets, TV: How Midterm Disinformation Has Washed Over Pennsylvania

Jill Greene, the state representative for Common Cause, the national good-government organization, said that the many unfounded and untruthful claims posed a challenge for voters. “They don’t really know what to believe,” she said.

Voting & Elections 11.1.2022

Washington Post: GOP push to monitor voting in Texas’s Harris County spurs outcry

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the nonpartisan voter education and advocacy group Common Cause Texas, said that while so far there have not been many complaints to his group’s hotline, he is concerned that poll observers could overstep in this year’s tense atmosphere. During a training last week, Gutierrez said volunteers reported seeing people without the required identification circulating at polling locations close to voters. One Black voter complained to the hotline that when he showed up to vote at a polling location at a southwest Dallas community college, a White man outside told him he had to first surrender his cellphone and smartwatch, Gutierrez said. He said the voter complied, cast his ballot and recovered his items, only to discover the man who seized them “was not a worker at that poll site. They were just trying to be intimidating.”

Media & Democracy 10.31.2022

Associated Press: Musk boosts surge in misinformation about Pelosi attack

Yosef Getachew, director of the media and democracy program at Common Cause, said there’s a significant risk that misinformation spreading so soon before the election could confuse or frighten voters, or lead to more polarization or even acts of violence. “Rather than cave in to conspiracy theorists and propaganda peddlers, we urge Musk to ensure Twitter’s rules and enforcement practices reflect our values of democracy and public safety,” Getachew said.

Voting & Elections 10.30.2022

HuffPost: The 2022 Election Nightmare Has Already Started

“We were saying, in Pennsylvania you have to pass something to deal with pre-processing,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonprofit active in monitoring elections. “To me, at this point, it is purposeful. They want chaos. If you refuse to pass laws, you are asking for what’s next.” ... The lies Republicans spread about the post-election vote count highlight a mostly overlooked aspect of elections: that they do not end on Election Day. Ballots must be processed, counted, canvassed and certified. When elections are extremely close, recounts may be in order depending on each state’s recount laws.  “In the past, election protection broadly has been about focusing on how we are preparing up to the election ― the day before and the day of the election,” said Quentin Turner, director of Common Cause Michigan. “But in the past couple years, that has changed. The days leading up to and on Election Day are the pregame. The work continues on in just as an intense way after the election. And that is where the most opportunities are for people who want to sow discord or doubt in the process.”

Media & Democracy 10.28.2022

Reuters: With U.S. midterms ahead, Musk's Twitter takeover raises fear of misinformation wave

"(Musk's acquisition) could certainly create a much bigger pathway for disinformation agents to spread harmful information on the platform," said Yosef Getachew, the director of the media and democracy program at Common Cause, the nonpartisan public interest organization. "Content moderation policies are only effective if there are people there to enforce them and systems in place to ensure they are being enforced. If those rules are going to be out the window, that is going to be incredibly harmful."

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