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The major disruptions to yesterday's elections caused by COVID-19 hammered home the need to retrench and take steps now to safeguard our democracy. To protect the safety of all voters and the integrity of our elections, Common Cause is now calling for a delay of any in-person voting for at least the next few weeks. The COVID-19 crisis is reshaping many of our day-to-day lives in ways we weren’t expecting, including disrupting elections, but now is the time to act to ensure our primaries and general election are held this year and conducted in a safe, fair, and orderly manner.

As the country continues to grapple with challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Common Cause encourages election officials and lawmakers to consider adopting emergency measures to protect public health and every Americans’ right to vote in the upcoming primary elections and the November general election.

Democracy reform, driven by the people, is on the march in states and municipalities across the nation where scores of pro-democracy reforms have been enacted. But democracy reform remains stalled in the U.S. Senate where the Republican majority ignores the will of the people. Sunday will mark one year since the U.S. House of Representatives passed its sweeping and transformative package of pro-democracy reforms in the For the People Act, or H.R. 1.

As millions of voters head to the polls today, Common Cause is working in the Election Protection coalition to help voters across the country who are having issues voting and working with election administrators to solve problems. For 50 years, Common Cause has a nonpartisan resource to voters, helping solve problems and making our elections more accessible and secure for all voters. Common Cause’s work in the 2020 Election Protection effort is focused on running field programs in targeted states where we organize and train nonpartisan volunteers to help voters and monitor issues at polling places. Common Cause also leads a social media monitoring program to flag and work with social media platforms to remove posts that spread misinformation and disinformation about people’s right to vote or posts that attempt to confuse people about when, where, and how to vote. 

Americans deserve secure and fair elections and caucuses as they choose their elected representatives. Last night a new app that was introduced to help report Iowa caucus results failed. The new app – which Nevada had been planning to use for its caucuses later this month - was intended to help the precinct chairs record the results from each round of voting and aggregate the results. But no results were delivered because the app failed in numerous ways.

At a time of deep partisan divide in Washington, Congress deserves credit for allocating significant additional resources for election security in the face of ongoing attacks on our election infrastructure by hostile foreign governments. This $425 million can be put to good use toward critical contingency plans for the 2020 elections should election systems fail due to foreign interference. As national intelligence agencies have warned the attacks on our election infrastructure are ongoing.