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“We certainly know elections can, and have been, and will be again decided by a handful of votes, so anything that affects voters has the potential to change the outcome,” said Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at Common Cause, an advocacy organization whose efforts include fighting mis- and disinformation. “That would include voter myths or disinformation which could either cause the voter to miss the chance to participate because they believed incorrect information, or cause them to not participate at all because they don’t believe in the integrity of the election process,” Littlewood said. ... The steps a voter should take are “the same whether it’s a tweet, a Facebook post, a WhatsApp chat from your uncle or aunt or a Telegram message from former President Trump,” Littlewood said. “You should take the same steps of verifying that it’s a trusted source of information and verifying the motivation of who the provider of the information is,” he said. ...

The main reason behind the fight over assets, said Jonathan Mehta Stein of California Common Cause, is the political benefits they can bring to a council member. “It all goes back to campaign fundraising and building power,” said Stein, who is the group’s executive director. Those benefits are twofold, Stein said. First, having a business or commercial hub in your district puts you in contact with business owners who want to curry favor with you, which translates into campaign donations. And second, having a significant asset such as a major event space or a high-profile business gives you opportunities to hobnob with VIPs and powerful state figures. “You’re building your networks; you’re building your Rolodex,” developing social cachet that will come in handy when you’re running for higher office, he said. What the call revealed was council members “trying to build the political power of one racial or ethnic group at the expense of another,” Stein said. “But their own interest in the future of their political careers was also at play amid all the racism. ... When they’re trying to secure economic assets in their districts or their friends’ districts, they are trying to secure a glide path to more power, more influence and higher office for themselves and their friends.”

Reasons for these violations range from lawmakers "being sloppy to just not caring about stock disclosure," said Aaron Scherb of nonpartisan government reform group Common Cause.

Law professor Michele Goodwin shared the 2011 article from The Los Angeles Times on Twitter on Monday and tagged Common Cause, the watchdog group that initially reported on Thomas' failure to disclose his wife's income from the Heritage Foundation. Retweeting Goodwin, Common Cause wrote: "We reviewed Justice Thomas' financial disclosure filings years ago and found that he failed to disclose his wife's income ($686,589) from the Heritage Foundation. We'll keep calling out Ginni Thomas until we have an ethical Supreme Court."

Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, generally praised the legislation as strong, if imperfect, particularly in its proposed increases in penalties for violating the law. "It would go a long way to give more than just a slap on the wrist to people who don't comply with the STOCK Act, which should really help compliance overall," Scherb said. He also said he's glad the bill strengthens rules for all branches of the government, not just Congress, and that he's not concerned that it includes Supreme Court justices — a provision that some government reformers say will "poison" the bill among Senate Republicans who might otherwise be inclined to support it. "The House shouldn't project what might or might not happen in the Senate," he said.

“The ‘big lie’ has become embedded in our political discourse, and it’s become a talking point for election-deniers to preemptively declare that the midterm elections are going to be stolen or filled with voter fraud,” Yosef Getachew, a media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog, told the Post in August. “What we’ve seen is that Facebook and Twitter aren’t really doing the best job, or any job, in terms of removing and combating disinformation that’s around the ‘big lie.’”