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Voting & Elections 11.4.2021

CNN: North Carolina GOP-controlled legislature approves congressional map

"We are troubled that these districts would especially hurt Black voters, harmfully split communities and undermine the freedom of North Carolinians to have a voice in choosing their representatives," said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina.

Voting & Elections 11.4.2021

NPR (AUDIO): In the wake of 2020, election officials are beleaguered

Anthony Gutierrez with Common Cause Texas says whether this is a good thing kind of depends. ANTHONY GUTIERREZ: You know, it really can go both ways. I mean, you see some election administrators who do a really good job because they're professionals who stay in that job for decades in some cases. LOPEZ: But, Gutierrez says, sometimes appointments can be pretty political. For example, he says, Governor Greg Abbott recently appointed a new elections chief for the state who was part of President Trump's legal team trying to overturn 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Gutierrez says, in those situations, voters can't weigh in at the ballot box to vote someone out. He says this is why he thinks for this model to work, there needs to be transparency. GUTIERREZ: With this type of an appointment system, you really need to have citizens involved. You need to have a public, transparent interview process, where you have multiple candidates that people can interact with.

Money & Influence 11.3.2021

Daily Beast: Gabby Giffords Sues the NRA Over Secret GOP Donation Scheme

The sense of relief was shared by Paul Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at watchdog Common Cause, who told The Daily Beast that in the federal campaign finance world, “there’s no cop on the beat.” “For too long the FEC, primarily due to GOP Commissioners blocking agency action, has allowed massive violations of campaign finance law to go unpunished. Political players in Washington know there’s no cop on the beat. They cross legal lines, get away with it, and then commit even more egregious violations,” Ryan said.  He explained that, in response to complaints, “the FEC drags its feet for years”—often allowing the five-year statute of limitations to expire, after which the agency cannot haul violators into court. “Outrageously, commissioners then sometimes acknowledge that violations occurred, but that the FEC has run out of time to do anything about it,” Ryan continued. “The Campaign Legal Center and Giffords aren’t taking it anymore. This is vitally important work to hold lawbreakers accountable—work the FEC should be doing, but isn't. Godspeed.”

Voting & Elections 11.3.2021

New York Times: Why New Yorkers Rejected Ballot Proposals on Voting and Redistricting

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the civic watchdog group Common Cause New York and a proponent of all three initiatives, argued that the success of Republican and Conservative attacks highlighted the fragility of democracy itself. “There was a strong anti-democratic push and the pro-democracy folks stayed home,” she said. Finally, as written, the ballot questions, which required voters to flip their ballots over to weigh in, were hard to understand, according to Common Cause and like-minded groups. “The ballot language for 1, 3, and 4 was frankly impenetrable,” Ms. Lerner said of the three measures that went down to defeat.

Ballotpedia: Colorado Supreme Court approves state’s new congressional map

Jennifer Parenti, Northern Colorado organizer for Colorado Common Cause, said, “Communities of color make up about 30% of the state’s population overall. But unfortunately, this proposed congressional map does not reflect that diversity. It, rather, splits our communities of color across multiple districts, while seemingly prioritizing municipal boundaries and protecting incumbents.”

Money & Influence 11.2.2021

Daily Beast: MAGA Shit Fight May Land Marjorie Taylor Greene in Legal Hot Water

Paul Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at the campaign finance watchdog group Common Cause, agreed that the outstanding invoice could be considered an unreported debt. But he also offered a more pointed analysis. “Sounds as though Marjorie Taylor Greene has received and failed to report an illegal contribution,” Ryan said. In the campaign finance world, a “contribution” is not just money—it’s anything of value for the purpose of influencing an election. Goods and services, such as legal work, are considered “in-kind contributions,” and campaigns must either report receiving them or pay for them outright. In this case, Ryan observed, it appears neither of those things happened. “This could have gone a different way: A lawyer provides services, invoices the candidate for those services, and then the candidate pays for them,” Ryan said. “But it didn’t go that way here, and what we see is unpaid legal services that amount to an illegal contribution.” Ryan added that the bottom line was that, “if a candidate pays, it’s fine; if not, it’s an in-kind contribution.”

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