News Clips

Gerrymandering critics used the ruling to call for reforms in how state political maps are drawn, including broader use of independent commissions instead of having state legislatures draw the districts. "It is time for voters to take up the fight to pass redistricting reform at the state and local level because a narrow Supreme Court majority under Chief Justice John Roberts has failed to protect the voting rights of minority communities,” Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn said in a statement.

“Today, the U.S. Supreme Court today did not to address the unconstitutionality of one of the most partisan gerrymanders of state legislative districts (2011) in American history, but we remain hopeful that standing can be addressed and we can win justice in the courts. We even more urgently renew our call on the Wisconsin Legislature to replace this broken system with a transparent, non-partisan process modeled after our neighbor, Iowa, in time for the 2021 redistricting cycle, if not before.” - Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin

Pratt said in her ruling that Common Cause "has a high likelihood of success" on its claim that the law violates some of the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and "threatens disenfranchisement of eligible voters."

“We are pleased by the Court’s decision ― it will protect the freedom to vote for thousands of Hoosiers who risked unlawful disenfranchisement from the deeply flawed Crosscheck Program,” Common Cause Chief of Strategy Stephen Spaulding said Friday. “Common Cause is committed to doing everything it can to ensure that every eligible voter can make their voice heard in our democracy.”

“The fact is that this is really serious, and it needs the attention that a hostile invasion would get,” says Susannah Goodman, director of a voting-integrity campaign for Common Cause, the government-watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. “Because they did it with bits not bullets, we haven’t responded in the way that we need to,” she says.

In March, the advocacy group Common Cause alleged that Cambridge Analytica -- the firm that, through a U.K. affiliate, obtained personal data on up to 87 million Facebook users as part of its work for the Trump campaign -- violated election law by letting foreign nationals participate in the U.S. political decision-making process. Common Cause made its complaint to the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department.