News Clips

“The problem for Republicans is that the Wisconsin Elections Commission was pretty scrupulous. It did not tilt elections towards Republicans like they thought it would,” said Jay Heck, executive director of the democracy group Common Cause Wisconsin. If a Republican secretary of state presided over elections, they could tighten up rules around voting, from identification requirements to who could cast an absentee ballot and where they could drop it off — policies that, individually, might not cause a huge drop-off in voting, but together, amount to “death by a thousand cuts,” Heck said. And, if the secretary of state did assume the commission’s current power to certify the election results, they could try to disrupt that process as well. Essentially, Heck said, “Republicans are trying to weaken the Wisconsin Elections Commission for 2024 so that, when Trump runs again and Wisconsin will again be a very closely divided state, the election apparatus would be able to make decisions that would be very favorable for a Republican presidential candidate.”

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said the group has heard of similar efforts in Harris County, Texas; and Florida, but the challenges in Georgia are the most extensive currently underway. She said it’s also troubling because Georgia law allows the state to take over local elections boards if it finds them incompetent. Many clerks are worried that if they don’t do a quick vetting of the mass challenges or the challenges lead to longer lines on Election Day, they’ll face a state takeover.

New voters will turn out if they’re concerned about issues that are important to them, such as democracy, taxes, education and housing costs, said Aunna Dennis, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, a government accountability organization. “All these people are joining in democracy and getting their voices heard at the ballot box,” Dennis said. “We have to pay attention to why they want to go out and vote, and what they care about.”

Faced with clear evidence that he rallied the mob while it broke Capitol windows and became increasingly violent, he said this was not actually a “mob” but was simply “just a crowd,” like at a sporting event that just got out of hand. And when a D.C. police officer who was there trying to control the “crowd” told the court another story, Griffin continually resisted. He reverted to a claim that antifa, shorthand for left-wing anti-facists, was to blame and said the police officer who died the day after the riot died of natural causes and not from injuries suffered while being attacked with a fire extinguisher. Griffin said everything — from video clips and photos and his own postings — was taken out of context. He didn’t mean anything literally by it.

Redistricting is a hyper-partisan issue in the state that’s likely to have a direct but unpredictable impact on the races this year, said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio. Only one Republican justice, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, ruled against the GOP-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission. She must retire this year due to age restrictions, meaning a new GOP replacement could clear the legislature to draw lines without court interference. Turcer noted this is the first time justices are running with their party affiliations on the ballot.

Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at the nonpartisan government watchdog group Common Cause, said that the increased retirements and resignations mean that the country must invest in "the infrastructure to train the next generation of election workers." "We're going to run an election and we're going to make sure people can vote -- we're just going to have to use all hands on deck," she said of the upcoming midterms. "But we should be looking towards a long-term solution of proper investment in the election system."