News Clips

“What’s happening is that mechanisms of voter suppression are getting more sophisticated and more tailored," said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the good government group Common Cause. That isn't limited to new Americans. People who were born at home or on reservations or those whose documents were lost in natural disasters could have their right to vote jeopardized by similar laws, Albert said. More:New election laws could create barriers for voters with disabilities Accessing those documents can require navigating cumbersome processes and traveling to small government offices to get copies, she said. “If you are working an hourly job and are the main breadwinner of your family, you can’t go to another state to look at how to go about getting a copy of your birth certificate,” Albert said. While Arizona and Mississippi so far are the only states to adopt proof of citizenship requirements, Voting Rights Lab found 25 pieces of legislation proposed with similar provisions in 10 states, including Pennsylvania, Idaho and New York. “We know that bad efforts spread quickly as other states see the success of voter suppression in other states," Albert said.

“What happened with COVID was a longstanding problem coming home to roost,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause. Amid a pandemic, “the vast majority of our election workers couldn’t do the job, because it was not safe for them.”

Recent headlines, from the January 6th Select Committee’s hearings to the Supreme Court rolling back the right to reproductive healthcare, profoundly implicate the freedom that many will celebrate this Independence Day. Opponents of democracy — a system that works best when it empowers people to have an equal say in decisions that affect their futures — have waged a well-coordinated attack on it. Freedom must be fortified, it must be protected at the ballot box, and it must never be taken for granted.

“This is part of a broader strategy to make voting harder and impose the will of state legislatures regardless of the will of the people,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group. “It is a significant change to the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures.” ... Voting rights advocates point to that decision, specifically a quote from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as evidence that the Supreme Court has previously believed state courts have an oversight role. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” in policing partisan gerrymandering, Roberts wrote for the majority in Rucho v. Common Cause.

“The big thing with currency and crypto is just how incredibly volatile it is and how much its value can fluctuate,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs for nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause. “If you take a step back and think about why we regulate the raising and spending of money to influence elections, ultimately, it’s to prohibit corruption and the appearance of corruption that can come with large contributions of cash or other things of value.” Outside of that, Spaulding said, the lack of regulations surrounding these types of donations is also concerning. “People are familiar with the two largest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum,” he added. “But there are all sorts of cryptocurrencies that are coming on the market that are not entirely regulated, raising a lot of questions about whether campaign finance law, which is in place to curb corruption, can keep pace with changing cryptocurrency practices.” As for transparency and traceability, he said the amount of money being contributed may not be as important as who is making a contribution. “It’s not so much about the amount of money in politics; it’s where it comes from and what contributors want in return,” Spaulding added. “We’d love to encourage a system that relies on small-donor contributions because there’s less of a chance the contributions from many small-dollar donors will lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption, versus the system awash in large contributions.”

Members of the nonpartisan organization Common Cause say they’ve tracked an increase in disinformation online in 2016 and 2018 with a significant surge in voting related disinformation during the 2020 election cycle. “Disinformation agents are seeking to keep voters from casting their ballots by spreading content designed to confuse voters about the time, place and manner how to vote, intimidate or harass them from going to the polls,” said Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy Program Director at Common Cause.