News Clips

Wisconsin voters of all political views and stripes would be best served by Meagan Wolfe continuing in her current role. The integrity of the 2024 election and its adherence to the law and to fairness and democracy just might depend on it.

"This is an issue that's going to continue to snowball," said Stephen Spaulding, VP of policy and external affairs at Common Cause. "There are tools the FEC could employ, but no question, there also has to be a comprehensive legislative response." Emma Steiner, disinformation analyst at Common Cause, told Axios that the group's biggest concern about generative AI is that platforms "are not willing to act on evolving disinformation narratives. So while [companies] can attempt to drop new policies ... I'm not sure they will make an actual serious attempt to counter the issue."

“What’s happened over the last six years, in particular since the Trump years, is there’s been a systematic attempt to undermine the work of the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. “Because it’s apparently not as responsive in a partisan way to the Republicans as they would like.”

The key to having any interstate program function properly is having as many states participate as possible, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan group dedicated to upholding American democracy. "If Texas is going to lead the charge to have a bunch of red states create their own system, it’s hard to see how that can possibly be successful with such limited participation," he said.

The lifting of bans on former president Trump by Twitter and Facebook hammers home the point that there is little interest from social media platforms in combating election disinformation. The platforms are scaling back content moderation at a time when consistent enforcement of civic integrity policies can be most impactful. The next year is pivotal, not just in state legislatures but for people's attitudes toward democracy and the information they receive about it.

Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, which has long been critical of Trump’s allegations of election rigging, noted that all the investigations of the former president began well before he started running for president again. “Nobody is above the law, including former presidents, and running for president cannot and must not serve as a shield for wrongful conduct,” Scherb said.