Media Center

Today, Common Cause will release a new report - “Putin, Trump and Democracy’s Slippery Slope Toward Oligarchy”- that examines Russia’s attacks on the 2016 presidential election, the continuing threats to our democracy and solutions to address these threats. It also examines how the campaign and Administration of Donald Trump have harnessed our system’s weaknesses to their political and personal benefit.

Americans expect and deserve free and fair elections, but the release of a report on the Voting Machine Hacking Village at DEFCON last summer lays bare the vulnerabilities of our nation’s election equipment, databases and infrastructure. The Atlantic Council’s convening of a bipartisan group of national security advisors, cybersecurity experts and election officials to establish protocols to safeguard our elections is welcome news.

Americans deserve to know more about the Russian attack to sway the 2016 presidential race and Congress owes them some answers. Without undermining the investigation or any intelligence assets, Congress needs to share more of its findings with the American people. To date most of what citizens know about the attacks comes from media reports.

On Friday, Common Cause filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, in support of a challenge to Ohio’s aggressive voter roll purge program that stripped hundreds of thousands of Ohioans of their right to vote prior to the 2016 election. The brief focuses on a similar program in Georgia that also disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters and which Common Cause has challenged in court. The Husted brief emphasizes that the High Court’s decision will impact similar programs and millions of registered voters around the country.

Today’s revelations from DHS that 21 state election systems were targeted by Russian hackers is troubling on a number of levels. First it should never have taken the federal government so long to share this information with the targeted states. Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that some states have told reporters that they were unaware of being targeted.

Last night, the General Assembly passed important legislation to increase security of Rhode Island elections with post-election audits to ensure the accuracy of vote counts. The bills, once they are signed by Governor Gina Raimondo who has publicly supported them, will phase in the use of an innovative procedure called risk-limiting post-election audits. These audits serve as a check on the initial machine counts reported on election night, and confirm that our election results are correct.