News Clips

"It's illegal in every state to harass or intimidate a voter away from voting," said Suzanne Almeida, interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. "There are specific rules in the election code about not standing in the way of a voter and their franchise, and so poll watchers can't do that either."

“This is blatant voter suppression,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a voting rights group.

“But it’s the implementation and access to those drop boxes that become the question,” McClenaghan said. “The lines for our primary in August were cars in line to drop off their ballots on election night.” Among the challenges, she said: Figuring out where drop boxes are and which ones are available round the clock, as opposed to only when staff are present. She recommends voters check with their local Supervisor of Elections office. “It’s a new thing,” she said, “so everybody’s learning.”

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, also noted that fears over mass voter intimidation efforts in past years have not materialized, even when Trump urged supporters to go to the polls in 2016. “He likes the chaos, he wants to create chaos, because he thinks it benefits him,” Albert said. ‘We don't want to give him what he wants, which is fear and intimidation and chaos.”

“The positive thing that we can say is that the majority of election officials in this country have moved to provide more access to the ballot,” said Sylvia Albert, director of Common Cause’s voting and elections program, on a call with reporters last week. Albert said voters have benefited from a general shift toward mail voting this year but added that a clear winner in the legal battles has not emerged. “I would actually say it’s a mixed bag, and that’s the reflection of the decentralization of our election system. So while state judges have actually found generally more in favor of expanding voting rights, federal courts have generally deferred to the wants of the local election officials,” she said.

“This could be 2000′s hanging chad in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of the state chapter of the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause. “Potential challenges, delays in results, questions on which ballots count and who counts them — there are just a lot of questions, and that could open up Pennsylvania to a lot of uncertainty.” The group is working with election officials statewide, emphasizing clear and consistent guidelines for dealing with questionable marks, such as when a voter circles a name or uses an X or a checkmark rather than filling in the oval — or even crosses out one selection and marks a second.