News Clips

“All of these changes together are forcing Harris County voters to live in a different set of circumstances than the rest of the state. This is creating a disparate scenario for those voters and barriers to well run elections,” said Katya Ehresman, voting rights program director at Common Cause Texas. “There’s a clear partisan element to that with Harris County growing in its Democratic stronghold. But there’s also definitely a disparate racial impact element to these bills continuing to pass as the county is home to the largest population of Black, brown, [Asian American and Pacific Islander] voters in the state.”

State courts have become the battleground for partisan gerrymandering after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2019 ruling in the case known as Rucho v. Common Cause. "For several decades, people in the states had held out hope that the Supreme Court would lay down a standard for finding that partisan gerrymandering had happened and potentially overruling maps where that kind of vote rigging had happened," says Kathay Feng, vice president of programs at Common Cause, the advocacy group that has also helped lead the ongoing case against a North Carolina congressional map approved by Republican state lawmakers.

“It looks like they’re laying the groundwork to transfer the money to some sort of vehicle that would support his presidential run,” said Stephen Spaulding, a campaign finance expert at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “What that, again, goes to show is how loose the coordination rules are, how they need to be strengthened, and how existing rules need to be enforced.”

“It is stunning to me that this bill has moved forward,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. “Countywide voting is the solution to so many problems.” “If we end countywide voting, we are just ramping up more and more confusion for Texans,” Gutierrez said. He pointed to a study by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs, which found that confusion over voter ID laws kept some people from voting in Harris County.

“It’s definitely one of the most damaging,” said Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at the advocacy group Common Cause Texas, because by limiting voters’ options it could decrease turnout. The bill, like others that have made it through the Senate, must still pass the more moderate, Republican-controlled State House.

Common Cause NC, an open government advocacy group, has pushed for legislation to require 24 hours between the time a bill has been introduced and the time it goes to committee and at least 24 hours before a bill goes to a floor vote. “We didn’t even have 12 hours with this bill — and it was a 40-page-long bill,” Jane Pinsky, a program director with Common Cause, said. “It’s impossible to expect a legislator to do their job if they have 10 minutes to read a 40-page bill.” Pinsky said that people, regardless of their opinion on abortion, should be concerned when there isn’t openness and transparency in the legislative process. “This is supposed to be a deliberative process,” she said. “It is not supposed to be a rushed process.”