Media Center

In a letter to U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, the state legislators urge their federal counterparts to “do everything in your power to pass” the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

With The Facebook Papers adding daily to the evidence of the inability and unwillingness of social media giants to combat disinformation and other harmful content, Common Cause today released an extensive report on election disinformation, including a comprehensive set of reforms needed to curb this huge and growing problem and protect our right to vote in elections next week, next year, and beyond. Based on more than 15,000 hours monitoring social media in the 2020 election cycle, together with legal and policy expertise, “As a Matter of Fact: The Harms Caused by Election Disinformation” details the seriousness and scale of the threat, current applicable state and federal laws, and the woefully inadequate and inconsistent civic integrity policies of the social media giants. The report concludes with a sweeping series of reform recommendations to better enable us to fight back against election disinformation.

A new investigation by Common Cause’s disinformation analysts has revealed that social media giants Facebook and Twitter seem to have backed away from enforcement of their own policies and enforcement practices when it comes to combatting election-related disinformation. The white paper, “Trending in the Wrong Direction: Social Media Platforms’ Declining Enforcement of Voting Disinformation,” reveals that the social media platforms appear to have dramatically scaled-back their practices of removing or labeling dangerously false claims concerning widespread voter fraud.

Say the legislation “is the bold, comprehensive bill we need because the threats to our democracy are deep, systemic, and wide-ranging”

The project has been critical in shedding light not only on how politicians are targeting Facebook users, but also whether the platform is complying with its own political advertisement policies.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Common Cause, and Alliance for a Better Utah are filing campaign finance complaints in 15 states this week against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its legislative leaders for illegally giving and receiving sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to help their campaigns.