News Clips

Republicans appear to have cynically calculated that these “ballot security” measures to suppress the vote may be harmful to some of their own voters, but that it will block  more Wisconsinites who might vote for their political opponents.  Republicans have targeted voters who reside in urban areas like Milwaukee, Madison, Racine and Green Bay. They have also homed in on college and university students by making it more difficult for that population to vote, even with a college-issued photo ID, than almost anywhere else in the nation. Most cruelly, Republicans have targeted Wisconsinites with disabilities, the elderly and the poor who must rely on public transportation and don’t have or cannot easily obtain the required photo ID needed to vote in Wisconsin. Republicans have not always behaved like this in Wisconsin. The question now is when, or even if, they will come to their senses and abandon this vicious assault on the very essence of our being as Americans, a promise that has made this state and this nation a beacon of  freedom and hope in the world: our 233-year-old commitment to free and fair elections.

“Today’s decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court means that voters will be able to rely on the provisions of the VOTES Act in the upcoming elections. This is a big win for voting rights in Massachusetts,” said Geoff Foster, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts.

"The election would have looked very different," if the Supreme Court had embraced the legal theory the North Carolina lawmakers are pushing, said Suzanne Almeida, redistricting and representation counsel for Common Cause. "The scariest piece is that this is a fundamental reimagining of the relationship between state courts, state constitutions and state legislatures that is more likely to undermine the will of the people being upheld."

Aunna Dennis, executive director of democracy non-profit Common Cause Georgia, said she was “encouraged” by the grand jury’s progress. “The coordinated attempts by former President Donald Trump and his associates to discount and ignore the will of Georgian voters during the 2020 election cannot be swept under the rug,” she told The Independent via email this week. “Georgia can not continue to be the testing grounds for sensationalized propaganda attempts that are designed to deter voters from the ballot box. We need to know those who broke our laws in their dangerous attempts to hold on to power be held accountable. The transparency in this investigation into potential criminal misdeeds has bolstered my hopes that justice will ultimately be served,” she added.

Recent headlines, from the January 6th Select Committee’s hearings to the Supreme Court rolling back the right to reproductive healthcare, profoundly implicate the freedom that many will celebrate this Independence Day. Opponents of democracy — a system that works best when it empowers people to have an equal say in decisions that affect their futures — have waged a well-coordinated attack on it. Freedom must be fortified, it must be protected at the ballot box, and it must never be taken for granted.

“This is part of a broader strategy to make voting harder and impose the will of state legislatures regardless of the will of the people,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group. “It is a significant change to the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures.” ... Voting rights advocates point to that decision, specifically a quote from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as evidence that the Supreme Court has previously believed state courts have an oversight role. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” in policing partisan gerrymandering, Roberts wrote for the majority in Rucho v. Common Cause.