News Clips

Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon, says another problem is just the uncertainty of the period. Someone whose home has just burned down doesn’t necessarily know they will be living more than five weeks from now. “A lot of people in this chaotic situation aren’t sure yet where they will be on Election Day,” she says. (Common Cause supports the voter registration deadline being moved to as close as election day so people can re register new addresses as needed.)

Some inconsistencies likely arose from confusion over the last-minute court rulings, according to Jay Heck, state director for Common Cause Wisconsin, a government watchdog group. The appeals court reversed the district court’s lifting of the witness requirement just days before the election, he noted, leaving election officials disoriented. Heck also pointed to Wisconsin’s “unusually decentralized” election administration system, in which 1,850 separate municipalities handle voter registration and absentee ballots.

“The silver lining of this decision from the state Supreme Court is now that we know the rules, we can educate voters about the rules,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a good-government group that works on voter access matters. “And I have every confidence that voters can learn the rules right. There are plenty of ways, plenty of places in election law where we require voters to know specific steps that they need to take. This is just one more of those,” Almeida said.

Kate Titus, executive director of Common Cause Oregon, says another problem is just the uncertainty of the period. Someone whose home has just burned down doesn’t necessarily know they will be living more than five weeks from now. “A lot of people in this chaotic situation aren’t sure yet where they will be on Election Day,” she says. (Common Cause supports the voter registration deadline being moved to as close as election day so people can re register new addresses as needed.)

Americans deserve an impartial Supreme Court that puts judicial integrity, the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law above partisan interests. But, unfortunately, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have a different view of justice. The two are rushing to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — a champion for all Americans’ constitutional rights and liberties — in the middle of a national election and a pandemic that has led to the deaths of over 200,000 Americans, millions losing their jobs and many people struggling to make ends meet as a result of Trump and McConnell’s failure of leadership.

"In normal circumstances, election officials find it very difficult to have enough poll workers to run elections," says Sylvia Albert, Director of Voting and Elections at the watchdog group Common Cause. This year, she says, "the problem is exponentially larger."