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CNN: How William Rehnquist led to the new monumental challenge to presidential election rules

“It is rare to encounter a constitutional theory so antithetical to the Constitution’s text and structure, so inconsistent with the Constitution’s original meaning, so disdainful of this Court’s precedent, and so potentially damaging for American democracy,” lawyers for Common Cause and the other non-state parties said in their brief.

Voting & Elections 12.6.2022

USA Today/Gannett: Supreme Court pressed to give state legislatures more power to oversee federal elections

"To give absolute power to one branch of government, unbound by state constitutions, would lead us down a dangerous road to tyranny," asserted Kathay Feng, national redistricting director for Common Cause, which is opposing the position of the North Carolina GOP lawmakers in the case. 

Voting & Elections 12.5.2022

Austin American-Statesman: Texas' top elections official, Secretary of State John Scott, to step down

"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."

Voting & Elections 12.5.2022

Tallahassee Democrat/USA Today Network: Why did voter turnout drop in 2022 versus 2018? Strict voting laws, voter arrests, say voting rights advocates

“We know that registered voters with prior convictions and even people who are fully eligible to vote such as people who only have a misdemeanor are concerned or even scared about getting in trouble if they cast their ballots,” said Amy Keith, program director of Common Cause Florida.

Voting & Elections 12.4.2022

Associated Press: As Musk is learning, content moderation is a messy job

Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause, said his group reached out to Twitter last week about a tweet from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that alleged election fraud in Arizona. Musk had reinstated Greene’s personal account after she was kicked off Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. This time, Twitter was quick to respond, telling Common Cause that the tweet didn’t violate any rules and would stay up — even though Twitter requires the labeling or removal of content that spreads false or misleading claims about election results. Twitter gave Littlewood no explanation for why it wasn’t following its own rules. “I find that pretty confounding,” Littlewood said.

Media & Democracy 11.29.2022

HuffPost: Elon Musk Is Rolling Out Twitter's Red Carpet For The Far Right

Emma Steiner, a disinformation analyst at the watchdog group Common Cause, said she knew of new accounts being created on Twitter that were focused on the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, supporters of which call for the mass arrest or execution of public figures they accuse of being satanic pedophiles. Some accounts, Steiner said, are trying to “censorship check” Twitter by seeing what kind of material earns a response from the company ― what she called “a lot of boundary-pushing.” Steiner noted one recent high-stakes test Twitter faced: when Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, tweeted incorrect advice to voters on Election Day. Voters in Maricopa County were experiencing long lines and printer problems in several polling places across the county, which is home to Phoenix and most of the state’s voters. Arizonans can participate at any polling place in a given county — if they’ve signed in to one, they only need to be “checked out” to go to another — but Lake urged voters not to switch polling locations at all. Steiner contacted Twitter, urging the site to append a fact check to Lake’s tweets. Knowledgeable reporters, she noted, had pointed out that Lake was giving false information to her supporters. The tweets could potentially suppress the participation of Lake’s own supporters in the election, a violation of Twitter’s rules. “It was completely inaccurate,” Steiner said. “You just have to talk to a poll worker to be checked out, and then you can go to another location.” Twitter “declined” to act on the false Lake tweet, Steiner said. Since then, Lake has repeatedly cited long lines on Election Day as part of her refusal to concede the election, despite trailing the winner, Democrat Katie Hobbs, by more than 17,000 votes. Twitter’s refusal to address the false information from Lake is part of a pattern: The previous Friday, Common Cause had flagged multiple inaccurate tweets about vote-rigging and election fraud, some from accounts with more than 1 million followers, to Twitter only to hear the day before Election Day ― an unusually long response time ― that Twitter would not take action. “It made us wonder if content moderation was still happening at the platform,” Steiner said. To the extent Musk is following any plan at all, it’s one of opposition to his perceived philosophical enemies, Steiner said. “It does seem to be kind of an ‘owning the libs’ strategy.”

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