News Clips

That’s one of the reasons why Ballot PA — a coalition of civic and community organizations including Common Cause PA, the League of Women Voters, and the Committee of Seventy — has launched a campaign to open Pennsylvania’s closed primary system.

Rather than tossing the entire bill, Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said legislators should discuss how to improve it.

“They’re using the constitutional amendment to pass legislation they can’t pass through the traditional and appropriate way,” Ali said, calling it unethical.

If the subpoena is approved, Griffin, Robinson, and Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said their respective groups would have to shift resources to educate voters on security and what to do if their information is compromised.

“We have talked to inmates who have said that, you know, in trying to contact representatives, it's been a non-responsive situation.” Says Khalif Ali, Executive Director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. Ali says these inmates don't feel adequately represented in prisons outside of their permanent addresses and will disenfranchise 7,000 people.

Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a good-government advocacy group that works on issues related to voter access, called the subpoenas approved Wednesday a “frightening violation of voters’ privacy and an egregious abuse of power.” “There’s no explanation about what they intend to do with the information, or why they think they need it,” he said in a statement. “They also have not announced any plans for security measures to protect the information from disclosure. … Pennsylvanians deserve to have their private information protected by the people they elected to office, not used as political fodder to appease lies told by a former president.”