News Clips

“He’s running a con,” said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign-finance expert at the watchdog group Common Cause. “Talking about political expenses — but, in reality, raising money for self-enrichment.”

“It’s going to be harder for people to vote,” said Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for Common Cause, which advocates for expanded voter access. “It means that states have to put more money and time and energy into educating the voting population in how to go about being able to vote in spite of these burdens.”

“When you go back and read the Shelby County decision, it didn’t actually strike down the concept of preclearance itself,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, which supports the legislation. Instead, it struck down the formula to determine which states had to get preclearance, he added. The court said the previous system was outdated. The bill would also subject certain proposed laws to preclearance, even potentially in jurisdictions that would not otherwise fall under the 25-year lookback criteria.  The bill’s Section 6 would set out several practices, including changes to voter identification needed to vote and maintenance of voter rolls, that could be subject to preclearance. “All those that have been shown to be discriminatory would need to be precleared,” Spaulding said.

Deadlines aren't as important as transparency and public input, said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, which pushed for redistricting reform via two constitutional amendments.   "It is not the end of the world if they miss the deadline," Turcer said. "It is a problem if they don’t lay out a plan and address public concerns about a secretive process."

Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, said the maps the Legislature will vote on Tuesday “will not be crafted of public input, but of pure politics.” “At each opportunity in this redistricting process, it’s as if lawmakers went out of their way to ensure the creation of these maps had as little public input as possible,” Young said.

“We think our process will produce better maps -- maps that better serve the interests of voters and communities,” said Julia Vaughn, executive director of Common Cause Indiana, which helped form the citizens commission. Dan Vicuna, national redistricting manager for Common Cause, said there are efforts underway across the country “trying to shame the legislature into doing the right thing.” But if lawmakers don’t adopt citizens’ redistricting suggestions, “we think it could be more powerful to judges, who have less of a partisan stake in how these districts are drawn,” Vicuna said.