News Clips

"You need to cement districts ahead of time, so candidates know where they're running, said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director at Common Cause, a government watchdog organization. 

Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a watchdog group, said the main issue big companies need to tackle is not getting their employees to vote but to work the polls. "The reality is that the government has been unable to really secure poll workers on a national scale," Albert said. "People just don't think about it. They go to vote and there's the same person there that was there the last time they went to vote. But when you tell people, you being there can actually ensure that people in your community are able to vote a ballot that counts, that's an amazing gift," she added. While there has been an increasing push to make Election Day a national holiday, Albert points out that it is not the end-all-be-all for a democracy. While it may be one step towards ending vote suppression, hourly workers would still need to clock in on holidays. It will take a collective effort from citizens, companies and the government to encourage voters to shape the country's future and Albert thinks that companies are a crucial player. "Corporate America has a gigantic stage and a lot of power. They could have a really positive effect if they step up," she said.

Under federal law, presidential candidates must file monthly reports in an election year if they have raised or spent $100,000 -- or anticipate doing so during the course of the year, said Paul Ryan, an election law expert who oversees policy and litigation at Common Cause. The bigger legal jeopardy might be for the Trump campaign if evidence ever emerged that they operated in concert with West to benefit the President's reelection, Ryan said. "If the Trump campaign is asking Kayne West to do these things -- qualify for the ballot, etc. -- then arguably the Trump campaign is soliciting an illegally large, in-kind contributions to the Trump campaign in the form of every penny Kanye West spends," he said.

“He’s either violating the reporting requirements or doesn’t anticipate to spend $100,000 or more on his presidential campaign, and the latter part seems unlikely,” said Paul S. Ryan, the head of litigation at the good government group Common Cause. “He’s missed an FEC reporting deadline on August 20 and is in [likely] violation of the law.” ... But if West simply refused to comply, the FEC would have to step in and actually vote to bring him to court. Since Trump has failed to nominate enough people for a quorum on the FEC’s commission, that means the organization is totally toothless. And if his campaign continues to refuse to follow the law, it might be impossible to know exactly how deep the GOP’s involvement in West’s campaign is until well after the November election. “The law wasn’t designed to deal with the wealthy spoiler candidate who’s trying to avoid disclosure to help another candidate,” said Ryan. “Kanye West isn’t the typical candidate so this enforcement mechanism isn’t going to work for his campaign.”

Co-hosts Roy Wood, Jr. and Desi Lydic interview three contestants, including Common Cause's Vashti Hinton-Smith whose vote is suppressed by gerrymandering that split the North Carolina A&T campus into two congressional districts, diluting the voting power of students at the HBCU campus. And HBCU Democracy Fellow Jaden Peay had his vote suppressed by onerous Voter ID laws. 

“President Trump and Postmaster General DeJoy’s continued attempts to try to rig the election by undermining the USPS received a strong bipartisan warning today: don’t mess with the USPS,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement Saturday. “As the nation continues to suffer from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a robust and dependable USPS is needed more than ever.”