News Clips

Wisconsin has already done its own canvas, which was completed Tuesday and added 181 votes to Biden's haul, Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, told reporters in a conference call. It's very rare that a recount changes the outcome of an election, and Biden's 20,608-vote margin of victory in Wisconsin makes it extremely unlikely the state would be awarded to Trump, he said. The Wisconsin recount demand is among a series of efforts the losing Trump campaign has made to challenge the results of the Nov. 3 election, a race Biden won by more than 5.8 million votes nationwide and by a 306-232 Electoral College vote margin. Dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and supporters – ranging from the use of Sharpies to fill out Arizona ballots to unproven claims that Republican observers were not allowed to monitor vote counters – have been rejected by the courts or withdrawn. "There's no merit to the lawsuits being brought by Team Trump," Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation for Common Cause, told reporters in the conference call. "I think we're seeing a good old-fashioned fundraising bait-and-switch scheme."

“You can’t have net neutrality without Title II,” Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, said. To reclassify broadband under Title II, a Democratic-led FCC may reverse an order adopted in October by the GOP-led FCC that affirmed its repeal of the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

“The option for Steve Ricchetti is to recuse from involvement in White House policy matters that directly and substantially impact the finances of his brother,” Paul Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at ethics watchdog Common Cause, told CNBC on Tuesday. “I think it’s fair to expect public officials to recuse themselves from government decision making that could financially benefit their immediate family members.”

Campaign finance experts recoiled at Trainor’s apparent embrace of the dubious allegations. “My biggest concern with Commissioner Trainor is his partisanship, and to the extent that overlaps with the conspiracy theorizing about election fraud, that’s a concern,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, the vice president of litigation with the group Common Cause, in an interview on Tuesday. “The focus should be on the business of the FEC and the suitability of these nominees to do that important work, not on crazy conspiracy theories about nonexistent election fraud,” said Common Cause’s Ryan. But, he added, “nothing would surprise me.”

“New York voters should understand that we will not know the results of many close races until some weeks later,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group. ”And that is not the death of democracy, but a sign of life.”

Democracy is not a state or frame of mind, it is an act guaranteed only by us — the voters. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the deliberate barriers set to silence the voices of Black people, new Americans and people just struggling to make ends meet, voters turned out in record numbers. We showed up to pick new leaders and pass political reform ballot measures that will shift power to the people and away from politicians. In this act, we — the voters — showed what a democracy that is based on fairness, justice and equality could look like.