News Clips

“It’s coming from conspiracy theories and lies,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that advocates for expanded voter access. “It’s attempting to lower people’s confidence in elections.” Albert and others said it’s unrealistic to think election officials can count millions of ballots by hand and report results quickly, given that ballots often include dozens of races. The partisan review last summer of the 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, which included a hand count, took several months and hundreds of people to complete.

“The governor of Florida does not have control over all Florida police departments or the FBI,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, told VICE News when DeSantis first announced his plans. “And by proposing this integrity unit, it seems like that’s what he wants: a personal, political goon squad.”

"No voter should have to factor the likelihood of getting investigated into their calculation of whether and how to vote. No one should face felony prosecution for helping three friends by taking their ballots to the post office," Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, said in a statement in late February. "Our 'government by the people' is stronger and more representative when more people vote."

Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a group defending the state's new districts, called Monday's action a victory. "We're pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the legislative defendants' shameless attempt to impose their gerrymandered congressional map upon North Carolina," Phillips said.

“If we can say only legislatures are able to make laws regarding the time, place, manner of elections, and courts don’t have any ability to change or constrain those laws, we’re really looking at a significant change in the balance of power between the three branches of state governments, as well as the level of intervention from federal courts in state lawmaking,” said Suzanne Almeida, redistricting counsel for Common Cause, a nonpartisan nonprofit involved in both the North Carolina and Pennsylvania cases.

"They're making it very difficult for people to access services that should be a right that people have," said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia. "Trying to put a veil over it doesn't help anything."