News Clips

“These steps are good but nowhere near good enough,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the government watchdog group, Common Cause Texas. “Other states are doing so much more while Governor Abbott is doing literally the least he can. We need swift and decisive action from either the Governor or Secretary of State to avoid a complete meltdown at the polls in November.”

Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner called it “unacceptable and unfortunate” that so many absentee ballots are being disqualified. “Right now an absentee ballot can be discarded if a cautious voter puts tape on their envelope to make sure the ballot doesn’t fall out,” she said. Her group wants lawmakers to allow voters to request absentee ballots earlier and allow election workers to start counting absentee ballots sooner after Election Day.

But even if it is likely the directive would lose in court, it is necessary to seek an immediate block to the directive because it could affect the 2020 Census count that is underway, said Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s national director of redistricting and representation. “It could affect response because most immigrant families have a mix of people of different status,” she said. The directive could also affect the Census Bureau’s process in deciding which households to go to, Feng said. Instead of attempting to count every household in the United States, she said, the bureau could “only go to households which they think fall into the category that the president wants counted.”

Groups led by Common Cause, a government watchdog group, have filed the first federal lawsuit against the Trump administration in response to President Trump's call to make an unprecedented change to the population numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, two days after Trump issued a memo calling to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the constitutionally mandated count of every person living in the country that is used to redistribute seats in the House of Representatives.

“We are thrilled that our people-powered campaign to make redistricting in Oregon fair and transparent has scored another victory in court,” said Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon which is part of the campaign.

An election watchdog believes the boards of elections in New York have acted in an "appropriate, measured way" to ensure proper counting of primary ballots. "It takes time to get it right,"Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York said.