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Today, Common Cause, joined by current and former elected and appointed Republican officials, filed an amici brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in support of the New York State’s challenge to the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The brief filed in State of New York v. United States Department of Commerce, emphasizes that the United States Constitution, and subsequently the Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees the right of every resident of the United States to be represented by a member of Congress. The Commerce Department’s addition of the citizenship question, the brief argues, will cause undercounts in areas with large non-citizen populations resulting in a Congress that will not be equally apportioned by population as the Founders intended.

Today, Common Cause released a new report on more than two dozen ballot initiatives and state constitutional amendments to strengthen, and in some cases undercut, democracy that will be decided by voters at the state and local level in November. “Democracy on the Ballot” traces the growing momentum behind citizen-driven pro-democracy reforms in recent years and examines initiatives and amendments on ballots in the 2018 general election from Florida to California and from North Dakota to New Mexico and urges support or opposition to each.

As Common Cause takes its quest to end partisan gerrymandering to the U.S. Supreme Court in Common Cause v. Rucho, it is also promoting a toolkit for courts and advocates to determine whether partisan gerrymandering has effectively taken away voters’ voices. A new and important tool, a “Swiss Army knife” paper written by Princeton University neuroscientist Samuel S. Wang and his team, pulls together several different legal and math approaches and explains how they all work together. Today he is named the winner of Common Cause’s third Partisan Gerrymandering Writing Competition.

The voters of Missouri prevailed today in their fight to reform the legislature, including the improving the redistricting process and limiting gifts from lobbyists. The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court and ruled that Amendment 1, the Clean Missouri-supported constitutional amendment to make government more responsive to the people, could appear on the November ballot. Common Cause filed an amicus brief in this case arguing that Amendment 1 contains commonsense and nonpartisan good government reforms that the people of Missouri should have the opportunity to vote on in November.

KANSAS CITY, MO, September 18, 2018:  As a crucial part of Common Cause’s fight against partisan gerrymandering, Common Cause weighed in on Missouri’s fight to reform the legislature, including the redistricting process and limiting gifts from lobbyists. Common Cause and three Republican current and former state senators filed an amicus brief in the Western District Court of Appeals of Missouri in support of Amendment 1, the Clean Missouri-supported constitutional amendment to make government more responsive to the people. The brief argues that Amendment 1 contains commonsense and nonpartisan good government reforms that the people of Missouri should have the opportunity to vote on in November.

A three-judge federal district court panel in North Carolina today issued its stay order in the partisan gerrymandering case Common Cause v. Rucho, ordering attorneys for the North Carolina Legislators who drew the maps to comply with the conditions requested by the Common Cause plaintiffs. Those conditions require the defendants to file their Jurisdictional Statement with the Supreme Court by October 1, 2018, and to seek no requests for extension of time while their appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.