News Clips

"There was a big movement on the left and right to move to paper and it was backed by computer scientists," as well as voting rights advocates and lawyers with expertise in elections, said Susannah Goodman, director of the Election Security Program at Common Cause.

Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion Jr. credited the board's decision to dig deeper on the Matos signatures and to do it in public. "The board made that decision in the right way – after publicly debating the tradeoffs they face," Marion wrote. "We won’t know how to fix this signature process moving forward unless we know the scope of the problem now."

"Today is another day of Michigan values holding strong against lies about our elections," Quentin Turner, program director at Common Cause Michigan, said in a statement. "For years, Michiganders of all parties have continued to resoundingly reject lies and conspiracy theories about our election." "Mr. DePerno, Ms. Rendon, and their team's alleged actions do not reflect the voices of millions who believe in fair, accessible elections and upholding the will of the people," Turner added. "We are convinced that the upcoming case against DePerno and Rendon will result in accountability and show, once again, that Michigan is a state that believes in protecting the rights of its citizens."

"Paper ballots marked by the voter — which New York currently uses — is the election security gold ... standard," said Sarah Goff, deputy director of Common Cause New York, on Tuesday. Adding a new machine, she said, comes off as "solving a problem we don't have in New York."

However, Stephen Spaulding, vice president for policy at the group Common Cause, said this would put even more pressure on the health of democracy in current political environment. "This opens up a significant risk to the perception that the winners and losers of an election are not determined by voters, but by those who stand to gain financially," he said. Common Cause has sent a filing to the commission, asking that it reject the proposal. Leadership with the House Task Force on Strengthening Democracy issued a similar request. Rep. Marc Pocan, D-Wis., is on the task force but declined comment.

The government accountability group Common Cause Texas called the move "another attempt to scare voters away from the ballot box by sewing doubt in the integrity of our elections." "Either this is a hasty move in response to partisan pressure, which should be discouraged from the Secretary of State's office, or it is a deceitful omission that should be looked at skeptically," Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager for the organization said in a news release. "Texas should focus on strengthening the security of our elections, not removing systems, like ERIC, that ensure checks and balances especially given the SOS office's history with illegal voter purges."