News Clips

Stephen Spaulding, Common Cause Sr. Counsel for Policy & Government Affairs, discusses The For the People Act on ABC News Live the day before the bill was scheduled for markup in the Senate Rules Committee.

"Colorado is modeling how the country could be governing itself in the future," said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for good-government watchdog Common Cause. "It is an explicit rejection of the scorched-earth tactic that has been used by some party leaders, a way of demonstrating that we can bring people back to the table and make democracy work," Feng said.

“Having more voting rights lawyers at DOJ is extremely helpful, but as Attorney General Garland himself said, they also need Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act to give DOJ the tools it needs,” said Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs for advocacy group Common Cause. ... Scherb, whose organization participates in the Deadline for Democracy effort, said the legislative process is inching ahead slowly, despite Manchin’s public rejection of the For the People Act. Advocates are hopeful grassroots pressure will convince lawmakers there is strong public support for reform. “There’s certainly a lot more activity happening behind the scenes, as well as a huge public push,” he said.

“Republican intransigence on voting rights is not an excuse for inaction and Senator Manchin must wake up to this fact,” said Karen Hobart Flynn, the president of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, which backs the bill. “If Senator Manchin thinks there should be more input from Republicans – as there was in last month’s Senate markup, when several Republican amendments were adopted by the committee – you do that by advancing the bill through the legislative process,” Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause. “Senator Manchin should vote to advance the bill to a full floor debate, and not filibuster the bill with his Republican colleagues.”

“It’s a false choice. It has to be both,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “They’re both critically important pieces of legislation and it’s a false choice to say I’m for the other and not for this. Because only together will we fully rebalance the state of voting in America to favor access.” Advocates are heartened by polling that shows the measure is extremely popular and the fact that Democrats have held together so far and brought the bill to the verge of a Senate floor vote despite some grumbling from their own caucus. “What you’re seeing is a commitment to a floor vote and getting people on record,” Spaulding said. If Democrats went into the 2022 midterms without doing anything to protect voting rights, it would be disastrous, advocates said. “Voters showed up in record numbers to choose new leadership. There were commitments made across multiple Congresses on both bills and so saying ‘we tried’ isn’t going to work,” Spaulding said. “If these bills weren’t to go to President Biden’s desk, they’d have … to articulate why they did nothing when they had the power to do so.”

Common Cause Indiana policy director Julia Vaughn said the Legislature should use the coming months to hold hearings around the state for public comment. “Once you have proposals available, slow the process down,” Vaughn said. “Give people at least 30 days to understand and give feedback on what the Legislature has proposed.”