News Clips

“It was a great celebration and people responded as a result,” said Khalif Ali, executive director at Common Cause Pennsylvania, a watchdog and voting rights group. Ali attended one of the events next to a Pittsburgh satellite office in October.

Here in the commonwealth, we pick our leaders. Our leaders do not pick and choose which voices to listen to and which ones to silence. We have spoken. We’ve elected our next president.

Suzanne Almeida, interim director of the voting accessibility advocacy group Common Cause Pennsylvania, said she supports, “in principle,” the sending of mail-in ballot applications to all eligible voters in the state, but wants to make sure it’s accessible to all voters — including those with visual disabilities who would need to vote on a ballot marking device, for example.

“Rescheduling a primary election is not a decision that is made lightly, but moving this election now prevents us from having to implement last minute changes, which can disenfranchise voters,” a statement from Common Cause said. “We witnessed last week’s confusion in Ohio, when its government cancelled an election at the last minute. We don’t want that in Pennsylvania.”

“Pittsburgh and other cities, and counties, need to be more forward and be more aggressive at setting up their own campaign finance laws,” said Micah Sims, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan government accountability group.

“It’s been 80 years since we’ve done something like this,” said Micah Sims, head of the Pennsylvania branch of the good-government group Common Cause. “We can’t allow one particular entity to do it all by themselves. We have to work together.”