News Clips

"Election officials are just doing their job — they are not putting their thumb on the scale, they are not in charge of what the results are," said Suzanne Almeida, state operations director at Common Cause, a group advocating for accessible voting. "They are incredibly dedicated public servants, especially in the face of these threats."

“We view municipalities as these laboratories of democracy. They’re able to implement a lot of the reforms that we’re working on at a state level,” said Joanne Antoine, executive director of grass-roots voter-advocacy group Common Cause Maryland. “The more that municipalities pass these reforms, show that young people are capable of voting, the more we can push them elsewhere. … My hope is that we’ll come back to these things again,” she said.

Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager for Common Cause Texas, stressed that more voting isn’t a problem. Having more polling places in counties that are growing should always be a goal, she said. The real issue that should be addressed is the chronic underfunding of election system, she said. “The biggest issue is election administration and making sure that we can do that well funded and equitably, and that’s not something that Senate Bill 924 created an issue with,” Ehresman said. “That’s something that the state legislature has continued to avoid addressing.”

Voting-rights advocates said Tuesday that they’ve heard from students, including “dozens” at Ohio State University, who have said they never got the mail ballot they requested for today’s election. Mia Lewis, associate director of Common Cause Ohio, said they’ve encountered these students as they’ve showed up at polling places this morning on OSU’s campus to try to vote. Lewis said that other than in college towns, state data doesn’t show an unusually high number of outstanding absentee ballots overall. Voting-rights advocates weren’t certain about the reason for the ballot problems for students, but thought it could have something to do with university mail systems that serve as a “middle man” between students and the post office.

Though many North Carolinians may have already experienced their first brush with the state's new voter ID laws during this year's municipal election cycle, there are still some questions residents may have about the new requirements. Host Jeff Tiberii sat down with Tyler Daye, policy and civic engagement manager for Common Cause North Carolina to discuss a host of issues, including which IDs are valid, whether or not an expired driver's license can be used at the polls and how to obtain a valid ID for free.

"I get very worried. How do you have a democracy that is functional with so much misinformation?" Catherine Turcer, the executive director of government accountability group Common Cause Ohio, which endorsed Issue 1, told Salon. "Because we need good information to make decisions, and the misinformation doesn't just cloud the decision-making process, it doesn't just leave people with true misunderstandings. It can also completely turn off people so that they decide to opt out." Turcer said canvassers reported that constituents have expressed confusion about the moniker "Issue 1" in the Nov. 7 election, with many mistaking it for the ballot initiative of the same name in Ohio's Aug. 8 special election.  The League of Women Voters Ohio and Common Cause Ohio have worked to combat the misinformation given the high stakes surrounding abortion and reproductive care in the state. Turcer is hopeful that Ohioans will be able to "suss out the misinformation and the power grab" come Tuesday as they did in voting down August's Issue 1.  "One of the things that I think is gonna make a real difference is who shows up at the polls during early votes, who shows up at the polls on Election Day," Turcer told Salon. "I think at the end of the day, Issue 1 will be determined by who shows up to vote."