News Clips

Trump could use money in his political action committees to pay for the plane upgrades, or other expenses, experts say. "PACs are often used as slush funds," said Paul S. Ryan, an expert on campaign finance and a top lawyer at Common Cause, a good governance non-profit. "Campaign finance law doesn't require PAC money to be used for political purposes, leaving open the possibility that Trump could use PAC funds to pay for private plane repairs."

However, critics like Stephen Spaulding with the watchdog group Common Cause, call it voter suppression. “In the wake of that record turn-out, we are seeing a backlash in some states that are looking to really curtail that access to the ballot box,” said Spaulding. In Washington, there’s a dueling effort by Congressional Democrats intended to expand voter access. The “For the People Act”, or H.R.1, is a sweeping reform bill that could put an end to those state voting restrictions. “It sets a national uniform standard,” said Spaulding. “So, no matter what zip code you live in, you will have access to those basic standards like two weeks of early voting, vote by mail if you want to do it, and automatic voter registration.”

"If the result in Ohio had been that Biden won, it is extremely difficult for me to imagine that we wouldn't have a dozen bills already in the legislature now," said Mia Lewis of Common Cause Ohio, a nonpartisan democracy watchdog. ... In Pennsylvania, where a slew of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies challenging Biden's electoral victory failed to pass muster in the courts, Republicans are now targeting the methods by which judges in the state are elected. "Our understanding is there is a significant amount of animosity toward the appellate courts by the Republicans, and it came about in legislation," said Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause in Pennsylvania. "It's a direct response to the results of the November election," Ali said. "There's an idea going out that if democracy doesn't give you what you want, it must be broken."

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said out-of-precinct voters would be disenfranchised if their provisional ballots are discarded. Under current law, federal and state races for voters who show up in the wrong county precinct are counted, but they can’t vote for local contests they’re not eligible to participate in. “This bill cuts at every part of the voting process in Georgia and is making it very difficult for the most vulnerable populations in Georgia to be able to cast a ballot,” Dennis said.

“These exact kinds of lies about voting led to people dying in the insurrection at the Capitol. This goes way beyond politicians playing legislative chess to retain power,” Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of the Texas chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group, wrote in an email.

“It’s not that something bad didn’t happen when we worried something bad would happen. It’s that we did all this hard work to stop the bad thing from happening,” said Sylvia Albert with Common Cause, one of several groups assisting voters who encountered problems with mail ballots.