News Clips

Electronic voter registration in Texas is also a focus of groups like Common Cause, a voter rights and ethics watchdog group, that has made online voter registration legislation a priority for the upcoming session, said Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas. “The state should be more concerned with how few Texans are registering to vote and how few Texans are actually voting,” Gutierrez said. “We did a little better this past midterm election than we historically have ... but that isn’t a lot to brag about. It’s just simple things like online registration that will make a huge difference.”

“Nothing is 100 percent guaranteed in Albany,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government reform group. But she added: “I think it would be very very difficult for people who were elected on the promise that they were going to heed the voice of the voter, to then turn around and just have it be old-fashioned Albany business as usual.”

“As a state, we were a leader in voting rights, arguably, for the decade before the 2010 shift in power,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause in North Carolina, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

Passage of this legislation continues to be a priority for Common Cause Rhode Island, a government group. John Marion, the executive director, said Wednesday he’s hopeful. “Some of the political obstacles are fading because both voters and politicians are understanding the value of early voting,” he said.

“They are not chosen for their ability to manage or familiarity with election procedures,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause in New York City. “They are chosen for their party loyalty and to provide jobs to the party faithful.”

“The number of people who cast provisional ballots,” says Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, “doesn’t even come close to the number of people who were disenfranchised.” The Abrams campaign heard from 25,000 people who had problems voting. Henderson helped oversee election protection efforts for nonpartisan voting rights groups and said “our phones in the command center were ringing off the hook.”