News Clips

Sarah Goff, the associate director of Common Cause, the good government group, said that the problem with broken scanners was like “a giant paper jam citywide.” ... Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause, said that the two-sheet ballot was a mistake. “It’s complicated,” she said. “It puts unnecessary pressure on the machine.”

"We see strong support for these initiatives from independents, Democrats and Republicans," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. "The question is whether incumbent officials will wake up to understand that people really do want democracy and that power belongs to the people."

"You can't run democracy on the cheap," said Jenny Flanagan, vice president for state operations with Common Cause. "We have to invest in our democracy to make our elections work."

“We are dealing with a very different climate in 2018,” said Karen Flynn, the president of Common Cause. “We do not have a Department of Justice that is working hand in hand with our network to be solving these problems, we don’t have the protections of the Voting Rights Act, and we have a president that is putting out messages that can feel threatening to many voters.”

“It’s indicative of a pattern with this administration,” said David Vance, a spokesman for Common Cause, a civil rights group that helped recruit 6,500 volunteers to monitor polling locations across the country Tuesday. “It’s an effort to intimidate voters and keep them away from the polls and try to dictate which voters will turn out and which voters won’t. It flies in the face of what the DOJ has done traditionally to protect voters.” ...Said Vance, of Common Cause: “To turn out and make yourself heard is the primary weapon to combat these attempts to suppress the vote.”

“We are definitely getting a lot of reports of intimidation out of Dallas County,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the Texas branch of the nonpartisan lobby Common Cause. At one precinct, he added, “people are just kind of yelling at voters as they are trying to approach the polls.” ... In Okaloosa and Taylor counties in northern Florida, reports arrived of voters getting text phone messages that their absentee ballots had not been received, when in fact they had, said Liza McClenaghan, board chair for Common Cause Florida.