News Clips

“Our coalition’s attempts to engage the Secretary of State’s office in a process of accountability and transparency have been stonewalled time and again,” Jay Young, Executive Director for Common Cause Illinois, said in a statement. ”’They’ve given us no way to verify the few claims they’ve made about fixing AVR.”

Sylvia Albert, national director of voting and elections at grassroots organization Common Cause, tells Bustle that people who want to get involved in ensuring fair elections can sign up to volunteer with Election Protection, which needs lawyers to answer questions via the nonpartisan voter hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE. If you're not a lawyer, you can still volunteer with Election Protection through its nonpartisan poll monitoring program. "Volunteers commit to taking at least one Election Day shift to stand outside of assigned polling location after receiving training," Election Protection's website states. "You will distribute 'Know Your Rights' cards to voters, answer basic questions from voters at the polls, and help voters resolve any problems that occur, with the help of trained legal professionals."

“The bottom line in Texas is Republicans are scared to death of demographic changes,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause in Texas, “and are doing anything and everything they can think of to keep those changing demographics from affecting elections."

It is the job of every person in America to make sure our family, friends and neighbors have all the information about why the census is important and why their response makes a difference. The consequences of an inaccurate count are serious and will last for the next decade.

Even though the purge is on hold, the controversy over the last few months may have intimidated people, particularly those who move a lot, and could deter them from voting this year, said Jay Heck, the executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of Common Cause. “If they just hear on the grapevine or through second and thirdhand knowledge that they’re probably not registered to vote any more, because some folks have said they shouldn’t be, then it’s going to have the effect that conservatives want, which is to depress voter turnout amongst that population,” he said.

Still, Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner said the judge’s decision “shines a light” on the process that New York uses to label some voters as inactive. She said she hopes lawmakers will look at such issues this year.For now, she said the judge’s decision means that poll workers at 2020 elections will have easy access to a list of inactive voters.“For the poll workers, this is so much easier,” she said. “Right now what happens when someone isn’t on the active list, poll workers often don’t know what to do. They get confused, they send people to different places and they send people away. This simplifies it.”