News Clips

“We saw a lot of poll workers wearing face masks and also some who were very vigorously wiping down every ballot-marking system after voters finished,” Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s Los Angeles-based national redistricting director, said on a conference call with reporters. “A few voters were nervous, asking if they [should] come out to vote. But given the long lines [in California] … there are a lot of voters who are still turning out.”

Kathay Feng, executive director of Common Cause of California, said election officials were using a new system for electronically checking voter registration and for marking ballots, which created voting delays. "At the same time that there is extremely high voter turnout, people are able to ask for same-day registration, people are able to request party registration change and to indicate that they want crossover voting," Feng said. Those requests are "causing extreme delays," she said, reported at 45 to 90 minutes.

For its part, the national media must recognize the public needs facts, not spin, not false equivalencies, not Beltway conjectures that ignore the very fragile state of our democracy and the need voters have for truth. And truth is necessary, even for those who refuse the believe it right now. It matters to most of us right now and will matter to everyone eventually if we are to repair our republic and strengthen democracy.

“I would frankly chalk up most of the issues we’re seeing today to Texas being a state that doesn’t prioritize voting,” Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. said "Problems like the Secretary of State website crashing and the widespread voting technology issues could have been easily avoided if the state allocated resources towards election infrastructure.”

The very high-profile failure of a new app that was supposed to help report Iowa Caucus results has generated some important lessons. Even though the New Hampshire primary was not plagued by the same kinds of gross technical failures, it would be a mistake to just quickly move on and forget the lessons of the first debacle. As the Nevada Caucus approaches, it’s clear some lessons have been learned, but not all.

Voter suppression is voter suppression, whether it’s done by purging the voter rolls, turning people away at the ballot box, or feeding them lies to keep them from showing up in the first place. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is failing in its response to address online voter suppression, as are policymakers, and both must take this threat more seriously.The stakes are higher in the 2020 elections, and we expect to see far more disinformation circulated by foreign governments, dark money groups, and online trolls. Maintaining the authentic civic engagement and discourse that underpins a healthy democracy will require stepping up the fight against these new efforts to suppress the vote.