News Clips

"It felt very much like the national effort to vilify and stop absentee voting," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government advocacy group.

Luttig, undeterred, praised his new legal bedfellows. “I’m honored to be co-counsel representing Common Cause in Moore v. Harper,” he told me. He described Katyal as a “dear friend,” and “one of the very finest Supreme Court advocates and originalist constitutional scholars in the country today.” As for the case, Luttig said, “Common Cause and the other respondents are not only on the side of the Constitution of the United States—they are also on the side of the angels.” 

If someone did attempt to register a dead relative, that application would most likely be rejected, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a group that advocates for voting access. If a dead person did make it onto the voter rolls, "the person attempting to impersonate the deceased person would still have to navigate identification requirements, signature verification, and the possibility that the voter registration would be flagged once the appropriate databases did get updated," Gutierrez said. "The odds of this person successfully casting a ballot for their dead relative are extremely low, and the odds of them using this ploy to have any meaningful impact on the outcome of an election are practically zero, whereas their odds of getting themselves into very serious legal trouble and probably spending some time in prison would be extremely high," Gutierrez said.

"It's a snake eating its tail at this point," Sylvia Albert, Common Cause's director of voting and elections, told Newsweek. The challenges to GOP's election denial tactic were unraveled in the Republican primaries, where GOP candidates are pitted against one another. As some moved onto the general ballot, others refused to accept the primary wins of members of their party. "If you have multiple election deniers up for election, and one of them wins, the other one is still going to deny that the election actually took place," Albert said. She added, "The right has gotten themselves to somewhere they didn't expect."

“We certainly know elections can, and have been, and will be again decided by a handful of votes, so anything that affects voters has the potential to change the outcome,” said Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at Common Cause, an advocacy organization whose efforts include fighting mis- and disinformation. “That would include voter myths or disinformation which could either cause the voter to miss the chance to participate because they believed incorrect information, or cause them to not participate at all because they don’t believe in the integrity of the election process,” Littlewood said. ... The steps a voter should take are “the same whether it’s a tweet, a Facebook post, a WhatsApp chat from your uncle or aunt or a Telegram message from former President Trump,” Littlewood said. “You should take the same steps of verifying that it’s a trusted source of information and verifying the motivation of who the provider of the information is,” he said. ...

The main reason behind the fight over assets, said Jonathan Mehta Stein of California Common Cause, is the political benefits they can bring to a council member. “It all goes back to campaign fundraising and building power,” said Stein, who is the group’s executive director. Those benefits are twofold, Stein said. First, having a business or commercial hub in your district puts you in contact with business owners who want to curry favor with you, which translates into campaign donations. And second, having a significant asset such as a major event space or a high-profile business gives you opportunities to hobnob with VIPs and powerful state figures. “You’re building your networks; you’re building your Rolodex,” developing social cachet that will come in handy when you’re running for higher office, he said. What the call revealed was council members “trying to build the political power of one racial or ethnic group at the expense of another,” Stein said. “But their own interest in the future of their political careers was also at play amid all the racism. ... When they’re trying to secure economic assets in their districts or their friends’ districts, they are trying to secure a glide path to more power, more influence and higher office for themselves and their friends.”