News Clips

Richard Beliles, Common Cause Kentucky board chairman, said offering “so few polling places for the primary is irresponsible and unacceptable, and sadly it was avoidable.”

Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, argues that Wisconsin’s ID requirements for young people violate their constitutional rights, forcing them to “jump through more hoops unnecessarily” than other citizens. At UW-Madison, Wisconsin’s largest university, student ID cards known as WisCards are not compliant with state laws for voting. Among the 13 four-year UW System schools, only four use student IDs that are also voter compliant. To comply with the law, UW System campuses offer separate voter IDs to students upon request. Heck said Republican lawmakers appear to have designed the requirements to discourage students from turning out at the polls. “Obviously a lot of college students are Republican, but their calculation is that more college students would likely vote for Democrats,” he said, adding the requirement “does give (Republicans) a partisan advantage.”

The state doesn’t start counting until all absentee ballots are in: It's a security measure to make sure nobody voted in-person and also submitted an absentee ballot, Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner said. “People need to change their expectations and adjust to the realities of our current elections,” Lerner said. “If that means taking a little extra time, better to be efficient and accurate than to be fast and raise questions.”

It should be clear to members of both parties that the cost of ensuring that every eligible voter can safely cast their ballot is a small price for Congress to pay to preserve our democracy — and the bill is due. Continued inaction from McConnell is an abdication of Congress’s responsibility that puts our democracy at risk. Americans deserve better than partisan games right now — the future of our democracy demands it.

Kate Titus is executive director of Common Cause Oregon, whose goal is to make the political process fair, transparent and more democratic. She is currently helping to lead People Not Politicians Oregon, a coalition circulating petitions to get an initiative on the November ballot that would create an independent commission to draw boundaries for the Legislature and congressional districts. Our recent conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Beth Rotman of Common Cause said the issue highlights the need for Congress to pass a law requiring its members to park their wealth in blind trusts while they are in office. “Sen. Loeffler, together with other congresspeople, should have all of their stocks in blind trusts so that everyday Americans do not have to guess about whether their representatives are putting their own interests over the interests of their constituents,” said Rotman, the organization’s director of money in politics and ethics.