News Clips

Despite Pennsylvania voters’ overwhelming rejection of hardliner policies this past November, as the new legislative session begins, it’s clear very little has changed in Harrisburg. Lawmakers are still using sleight-of-hand tricks to force their hardliner agenda on Pennsylvanians because they can’t pass it through regular legislation. As they have for so many years, these lawmakers have ignored the voice of the people and are trying to circumvent the legislative process by forcing through constitutional amendments that limit voting rights, create unnecessary and expensive bureaucracies, and upset the balance of power in the state government.

“It’s a state by state fight,” Dan Vicuna, the national redistricting manager of Common Cause, a voting rights organization, told Yahoo News. “In this country, there's a long history of using the redistricting process to discriminate against people of color or to discriminate against voters of one party.” According to voting rights advocates, a wave of racial gerrymandering is impacting maps across the country. The 2020 U.S Census Bureau reported that the overall racial diversity of the United States increased since 2010, and the Black population was the most prevalent in parts of the South. “But just because communities of color may drive population growth, that doesn't mean they have a seat at the table,” Dan Vicuna, the national redistricting manager of Common Cause, a national organization fighting for fair redistricting, told Yahoo News. “Unfortunately, in this country, there's a long history of elected officials in power using that power to either pack Black, Latino, Native American Asian voters into as few districts as possible or alternatively cracking those communities to spread voters throughout a bunch of different districts, so they have no power in any one district.”

“This case has set a clear precedent for redistricting in North Carolina,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, in a press release. “Voting maps must be free from gerrymandering and respect the right of North Carolinians to have a voice in choosing their representatives. Our districts belong to the people, not politicians.”

Voting rights advocates are mulling whether to mount another dauntingly expensive ballot initiative to make the commitment to nonpartisan maps ironclad, said Catherine Turcer, the executive director of Common Cause Ohio. And the bar to success might get even higher. Republican legislators proposed a constitutional amendment last month that would raise the threshold for voter approval of constitutional changes to 60 percent of the vote, from the current simple majority. Republicans call it a move “to safeguard Ohio’s constitution from special interests” who pour money into initiative campaigns. Ms. Turcer called it an effort to shield the ruling party from anything that could dilute its control. “It’s clear these people are drunk on power,” she said. “And what do you do with those kinds of people? You take away their keys.”

“I think the reason Common Cause is fighting so hard to make sure everyday people understand what’s at stake in Moore v. Harper is that this is not just about who decides how lines are drawn for districts in North Carolina. This is fundamentally about our American democracy,” Common Cause's National Redistricting Director Kathay Feng tells Symone Sanders, host of MSNBC's Symone Show.

"Confirmation hearings are how we’re supposed to have some assurance that the person in charge of elections in Texas is qualified to do that job," said Katya Ehresman, program manager for Common Cause Texas Voting Rights. "We should all be deeply alarmed by the fact that this is the third person to serve as secretary of state without having ever been confirmed by the Texas Senate. An office of this caliber should not continue to be filled by an unconfirmed and unelected official."