News Clips

How does a community like Homewood, Pennsylvania, address the lead in the soil that’s harming children or the proliferation of vacant lots? Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan organization that serves as a watchdog against corruption and voter suppression for Pennsylvanians, says it starts with creating civically oriented spaces where people can learn about the democratic process and unite with others experiencing the same struggles. He came to understand this long ago: His drive for social change started when he was a community organizer at Operation Better Block in Homewood, where his job was to form a civic association. He said he realized “civic associations are really the building blocks of a strong democracy.” “If you don’t talk to one another, you can’t begin to hold an elected official or a potential candidate accountable for those issues,” Ali says.

“One America News Network will be left without a major carrier to spread its often harmful and dangerous disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories,” said Yosef Getachew, the media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group that urged Verizon to drop OAN. “This is a welcome change but long overdue. “No company should profit from spreading content that endangers our democracy.” Common Cause and other civil rights groups have pressured carriers to drop OAN.

Beth Rotman, director of ethics at watchdog Common Cause, told The Daily Beast there’s a third option. “In practice, many people may start spending this money in the primary and pay it back; it’s a risk, but it may not be uncommon,” Rotman said, pointing out that the Cawthorn campaign can raise money to pay down its debts. “He needs to make this right by fundraising, and a lot of rules require that he do that staying within contribution limits.”

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group, said a ballot review such as the one in Tarrant County “elevates the narrative that election administrators are somehow not doing their jobs properly or even worse trying to sway elections.” “It’s a really dangerous lie that is being sold to a lot of people and frankly, it’s putting election administrators in a lot of danger,” Gutierrez said. “It all stems from this lie of elections about our elections not being safe.”

When I called up Catherine Turcer on Tuesday, she mentioned that her daughter had just sent her a text message saying it must feel like she’s living the same day over and over again. Turcer is the executive director of the Ohio chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, and one of the most knowledgeable people about redistricting in her state. Earlier that morning, the Ohio supreme court struck down the map for the state’s 15 congressional districts, saying they were so distorted in favor of Republicans that they violated the state constitution. It was the seventh time this year the court has struck down either a congressional or state legislative map this year (it has struck down the congressional map twice and state legislative districts five times). Turcer and I have spoken several times over the last few months as the saga in Ohio has unfolded, and she is not someone who sugar coats things. I’ve been interested in her perspective as someone who was initially optimistic about the reforms – she fought to pass them – but has seen the reality of how Republicans have brazenly ignored them this year. “It’s incredibly painful to participate in elections that you know are rigged,” she told me. “I’ve been encouraging folks to look at the upcoming elections as important to participate because if we do just opt out, we would have even worse representation.”

Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, helped author a letter from more than 120 civil society groups to seven major social media companies, noting that "disinformation related to the 2020 election has not gone away but has continued to proliferate." The letter’s demands included consistent enforcement of civic integrity policies during both election and non-election cycles and the prioritization of enforcement around combatting what they call the big lie that says Trump won the 2020 election. "A lot of the disinformation that we're seeing now is really recycled content from the Big Lie, but it's packaged in new ways that is getting more and more attention," Getachew said. "When we're talking about the 2022 election cycle, we're seeing a lot of candidates now preemptively declare voter fraud, and this is based primarily off the Big Lie. A lot of candidates are using the Big Lie as a platform plank."