News Clips

Lawsuits challenging Wisconsin’s congressional and state legislative maps “will most definitely” be filed, said Wisconsin Common Cause Executive Director Jay Heck. As they prepare to ask the courts to evaluate political maps, lawyers will line up voter plaintiffs from areas where Democratic-leaning precincts were merged into Republican-dominated districts beginning in 2011, Heck said.

Sailor Jones, associate director of Common Cause North Carolina, alluded to those setbacks in addressing the audience. “This time, my friends, the courts will not save us,” Jones said. “Who will?”

We are being silenced in Florida, with dangerous legislation making its way through the state Legislature that could stifle the ability of everyday Floridians to speak freely. House Bill 991 and the companion bill Senate Bill 1220 would dramatically change our state’s defamation laws and allow for monetary judgments when elected officials or others think they’ve been slighted on social media or in critical press reports. By doing away with the long-held standard of proving actual malice or ill intent in a defamation case, Florida would be inviting frivolous lawsuits to proliferate and arming elected officials and others with the ability to silence outspoken critics.

“ERIC was somehow bad because some people here characterized Pew as this ultraliberal foundation funding all of this ultraliberal and crazy stuff," said Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana. The organization was a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the state in 2017. “[IDEA] was a political stunt. And our voter rolls continue to need attention,” Vaughn said. “We gave up on trying to convince [Indiana state officials] to join ERIC a long time ago. They proactively said, ‘We don’t want anything to do with this.’ And we’ve got other fights to take on here. And now nobody’s paying attention to the issue.”

The bill received pushback from gun safety advocates like Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas. She said the legislation would make some voters and poll workers feel unsafe. “Texas has endured a period of increasing political violence and intimidation, especially against election workers,” Ehresman said. “HB 636 would create confusion amid existing state and federal laws and increase intimidation.”

“When things are added at the last minute, they don’t go through that same process. Meaningful discussion and opportunity for input doesn’t exist in the same way,” said Anne Gray Herring, a policy analyst for Common Cause Georgia, which advocates for government transparency. “Sometimes new versions (are introduced) right before a hearing and the public hasn’t had meaningful time to review the proposal.”