News Clips

New Mexico doesn’t require any reason for someone to request an absentee ballot. There are only really benefits to that, said Mason Graham, policy director for Common Cause, a nonprofit that works to uphold voter rights. He said it started up with the COVID-19 pandemic. He said absentee ballots allow for more convenience in voting and can help people do more research on candidates. Despite baseless misinformation around mail-in voting, it’s just as secure as in-person voting. Graham said there are extensive integrity and security measures with absentee ballots. For example, voters receive two envelopes with absentee ballots, he said. One is the actual ballot and another is a security envelope inside the ballot, Graham said, and the officials counting the votes verify that the security envelope is closed. Fraudulent ballots also don’t come through because election officials check names, social security numbers and addresses, Graham said. “It’s the exact same level of security that you would get if you were to go to your own voting location,” he said. There is 24-hour monitoring on drop boxes. “Any kind of tampering of ballot drop boxes would immediately be flagged, and election officials will be notified. So there isn’t any issue when it comes to the integrity of the ballot drop boxes,” Graham said.

“Having fair maps makes elected politicians responsive to the needs and wants of the people by having elections where voters make the calls,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said following Tuesday’s ruling. “We deserve better, and the law demands better, than the current voting maps that prevent Georgia’s communities on the margins of society from having a meaningful say in the halls of Congress.”

Dan Vicuna, director of redistricting and representation with Common Cause, said the solution to extreme gerrymandering is establishment of a nonpartisan system or commission with broad representation to draw up districts - which only exists in a handful of states. "The public understands that whether you're kept in one district with a community that shares concerns of all sorts can really make the difference between having a champion in the halls of power - or not having a champion," he explained.

“You need space,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause Ohio. “You need space to organize simple things like yard signs. A robust campaign actually needs at least one office — often more than one — if you’re going to be successful. Think about the number of media markets you have in Ohio. The secretary of state is running for the U.S. Senate.” “If in fact this has been planned for nearly five years, we should have been in the know for a really long time,” Turcer said. Turcer, of Common Cause, said housing parts of the LaRose campaign in the same building as his official state offices would raise the temptation for any state official to improperly use state space and resources in his or her campaign. In fact, it’s a violation of state law to solicit campaign donations from state office space. Turcer said good appearances are especially important when the elected official is also the state’s top elections officer. “The secretary of state runs Ohio elections and that means voters are scrutinizing him really closely,” she said. “They want to have faith that elections are well run and that’s a commitment that the secretary has made, and it doesn’t make sense to not set himself up for success by separating government work from campaign work.”

The potential change in process to come from this lawsuit worries Jenny Guzman, the program director for Common Cause Arizona, which advocates for voter rights. The organization isn’t sure signature verification is the best way to verify a ballot, but wants to make sure that officials have a large database to work from if this is the method they are using, she told me. Officials should also be attempting to contact voters whose signature is being questioned, Guzman said, which happens in Arizona under state law but doesn’t happen in every state. “Signatures should be allowed to change,” she told me. “It shouldn’t cause your ballot to be rejected.” Guzman said Common Cause Arizona prefers signature verification over these other methods. Guzman said her organization wants to leave AI out of it, though. Signatures shouldn’t have to match perfectly to be accepted, she said, and computers would be more rigid than humans in making these determinations, she said. Guzman said Common Cause Arizona believes something is needed to verify mail-in voters’ identities, “but additional barriers is not the answer.”

Stephen Spaulding, vice president of policy at the good government group Common Cause, told The Daily Beast that the Sheehy-Zinke relationship—consisting of major campaign contributions, federal contracts, and favorable legislation—was the exact kind of “pungent mix” that gives voters the impression that elected officials put corporate money over the public interest. Americans, Spaulding said, are “rightly turned off” by such relationships. “It’s what gives rise to corruption and the appearance of corruption, and the perception that the public interest is taking a back seat to a corporation’s bottom line,” Spaulding said. “It is all too common in Washington and it’s why we need to strengthen laws to guard against pay to play politics.” Spaulding, of Common Cause, told The Daily Beast that he couldn’t think of any precedent where a sitting senator owned a private company that held federal contracts. Elected officials should observe “the highest ethical standards,” he said, and argued Sheehy’s constituents deserve to know whether he will cut all ties, including divestiture. “That should include severing any ties once in office from their former business that profits from government contracts,” Spaulding said.