News Clips

Stephen Spaulding, vice president of policy for the nonprofit Common Cause, said gambling on elections is bad for democracy. "You can imagine wealthy gamblers could make significant money by exploiting disinformation to influence an electoral outcome that would protect the bettors' bottom line," Spaulding pointed out. "This again opens up a significant risk to the perception that the winners and losers of an election are not determined by voters, but by those who stand to gain financially." Spaulding noted the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision allowed companies to spend unlimited money on elections, and called betting on elections a "profound threat to democracy." "You can imagine a situation where an entity places an enormous wager on the outcome of an election, and also funnels resources through Super PACs or other 'dark money' vehicles to influence the outcome of an election," Spaulding explained. "That is inherently, we think, anti-democratic." Both Common Cause and some U.S. senators, including California's Dianne Feinstein, submitted letters of opposition during the public comment period, which ended in July. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is expected to make a decision by Sept. 21.

Georgia’s elections are all over the headlines this past week after the Trump indictment, but there is one issue key to protecting our votes missing from those headlines: transparency in campaign spending. In Georgia, we believe all voters have a right to know when wealthy special interests are spending big to influence our vote. Unfortunately, the Federal Election Commission, the agency tasked with enforcing federal campaign finance laws, has failed Georgia voters and left us in the dark about an out-of-state group that illegally spent untold sums to try and stop some of us from voting in the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff elections.

“No American is above the law—not even former presidents. The charges that a federal grand jury leveled today against former President Donald Trump are profoundly serious and must go to trial. The charges themselves are unprecedented, but so are the events that led to them. “The nonpartisan January 6 Select Committee revealed the months-long conspiracy to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and its culmination in the deadly insurrection. Anyone and everyone who broke the laws of this nation participating in that conspiracy must be held accountable.” —Marilyn Carpinteyro, interim co-president of Common Cause, on the indictment of former President Donald Trump for felony charges related to the 2020 election.

Common Cause Georgia executive director Aunna Dennis added that "we know today's indictment is just the beginning of what might be a long process in the courts, and that an indictment is not a conviction." Nevertheless, Dennis said, "today's indictment of Trump and his co-conspirators highlights Georgia voters' steadfast insistence that anyone who attempts to steal our most sacred of rights must be held accountable." "The people of Georgia can now take a moment to reflect on what type of government we want moving forward," said Dennis. "Do we want a democracy in the hands of a wealthy few, or in the hands of the people?"

“We’re very hopeful that what came out in Alabama will bode well for Florida,” said Kathay Feng, vice president of programs for Common Cause, one of the plaintiffs in the federal court challenge set for next month in Tallahassee. Feng said justices signaled that the “Voting Rights Act is not dead.”

“The observers that have come into the picture since 2020 are trying to find evidence of fraud, evidence that a voter shouldn’t be there. I think that’s been the shift,” said Erin Grunze, a voting and elections consultant for Common Cause Wisconsin who previously led an election observation program at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.