News Clips

Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause, said while no one was hurt, the attempt to poison or kill an election worker is despicable. "It's to destabilize our elections and to scare the public servants who run them," Mehta Stein pointed out. "And to make all of us more fearful of participating in our democracy." Mehta Stein blamed the rise in threats to election workers on the litany of false conspiracy theories claiming the 2020 election was rigged. "We have to find a way to reach people who think elections are being stolen in America," Mehta Stein stressed. "And verify for them that not only are their votes being counted, but that the United States and specifically California run some of the most secure elections in the world."

Of the 22 states that have some version of same-day registration, John Marion, executive director of Common Cause RI, says: "Some have no residency deadline, others have lengthy deadlines. All have residency requirements." The maximum allowed under legal precedent is 30 days." This year's version of the legislation has not yet been introduced, but Marion confirms his group's intent: If the repeal wins voter approval in November, "we would then advocate for an enabling statute that would allow for same-day voter registration." Marion is among those arguing: "For too long, Rhode Island has made it too difficult for too many of our residents to vote. That is because Rhode Island has the longest voter registration deadline in the country. "We're in the same company as states that include Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and that's not company we want to keep. "We want to be less like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi and more like Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, all of which offer same-day registration," said Marion.

While the Voters Choice Act was never intended to be a panacea for all voting challenges facing California, one thing is very clear: The law is a reform worth revisiting and reinvesting in, and still holds promise for expanding electoral participation across the state and across many voting groups.

Colorado Common Cause, which supported the plaintiffs’ case with an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief before the Colorado Supreme Court, on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court “to set a critical legal precedent to safeguard the future of American democracy.” “The Supreme Court must embrace its role as an active defender of our Constitution, or else it may crumble under the immense pressure it will surely face in the years to come,” Aly Belknap, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause New York, said that only U.S. citizens can vote in New York state. "Permanent residents and people authorized to work here are documented and approved by the federal government," Lerner said. "They pay state and federal taxes, and pay into Social Security as well. In many cases, they’ve lived in the United States for decades. There is nothing ‘illegal’ about them."

Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, said he thinks that Republicans lost recent state Supreme Court elections and a recent gubernatorial election partly because of their voters' aversion to early voting. "There is, I think, a realization on the part of some of them that they had better begin to do the things that progressives and Democrats are doing to turn out the vote if they want to carry the state for Trump or if they want to win a gubernatorial election in the near future," he said. Heck also predicts there will be a lot of "tension" within the party over early and mail voting as November gets closer. "I think there's going to be, if not an outright rupture, at least some pretty serious words back and forth between Republicans who are trying to encourage early voting and then those who just claim that early votes and absentee votes are all fraudulent," he said. "So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out."