News Clips

Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel at the government watchdog group Common Cause, described such violent tactics as “a core threat to our democracy”. “The threat of violence is really to intimidate people from doing their jobs and upholding their oath of office,” Spaulding said. “When you start having these violent episodes enter the system, it is totally counter to the way that we are supposed to engage in open and fair debate about policy issues in this country.”

“Specifically with the mail-in voting bills, that was a direct reaction [to the pandemic],” Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a nonprofit backing voting rights legislation, said. Previous attempts to pass legislation in Maryland simply to create a study of mail voting failed due to opposition in the state House of Delegates. But this year, both chambers adopted legislation to allow mail-in voting and approve the mailing of ballot applications to all registered voters. “It was interesting to see, because of the pandemic, the willingness,” Antoine said. “It was almost as though everyone had a change of heart and they realized that this can work.”

Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause Texas, told reporters last week that absent congressional action, his state may continue to pass maps that dilute the power of minority communities even as the state continues to grow more diverse. “This pattern, where groups like ours have to keep going to court every 10 years over maps that violate minority voting rights is just going to keep happening unless we get that action from Congress,” Gutierrez said.

The RNC’s use of donor money to pay Trump’s personal legal bills shows why Congress needs to extend the ban on such use of campaign funds to party committees, as well as candidate committees, said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney for the nonprofit Common Cause. “Federal law should ensure that contributions to political committees like the RNC are only used for legitimate political expenses—not for personal legal bills,” he said.

The racial impact of the maps is sweeping. The government accountability watchdog group Common Cause said a quarter of the 36 state legislative seats held by African Americans, all Democrats, would be likely to flip Republican. The district containing the seat that a Black congressman, Representative G.K. Butterfield, has occupied since 1992 also lost much of its Black constituency, and he chose to retire at the end of this term.

Johnson's calls for a legislative takeover of the elections system demonstrate "the firm grasp that the (Donald) Trump wing of the Republican Party has not only everywhere, but particularly here in Wisconsin," said Jay Heck, who runs the state branch of Common Cause. "It's a lot of political bluster, but it has to be taken seriously in these times," he added.