"The House of Representatives passed nearly 10 democracy reform bills, often with bipartisan support, this session, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked debate and markups on all of these bills and refused to allow a vote," Common Cause's director of legislative affairs, Aaron Scherb, said.

The 2020 Democracy Scorecard, one of the group's initiatives, provides data on every current member of the House of Representatives and Senate, including their votes and co-sponsorships of democracy reform bills.

Scherb...

Decisions over how the general election will be conducted need to be sorted out now, said Sylvia Albert, the director of Voting and Elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group.

“The key is not waiting for November,” Ms. Albert said. “The point of those lawsuits is to establish the policies and procedures that are going to be used in November so there isn’t going to be confusion on the day of the election.”

Noting that the initial draft of the PPP did not have that “carve-in” for chains, Common Cause’s Beth Rotman, an expert in money and politics, told the Daily Beast, “Essentially a combination of wealthy special interests together with well-placed contributors at a critical moment bought a revision to our stimulus package that defined small business as including big business because they owned large franchises made up of hundreds of smaller entities. They were following the law they helped write.” 

Catherine Turcer, the executive director of Common Cause Ohio, said that for vote-by-mail to be successful in Ohio, should that be the default in November, the process needs to be streamlined. That means eliminating the additional back-and-forth of submitting an absentee ballot application.

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, said “with this much money flowing around the last thing you want is for it to all go to people who just happen to be politically well connected as opposed to people who are out of a job without health care or have their business shutting down.”

“Every Texan needs should be able to safely register to vote and cast their ballot whether by mail or in person,” Anthony Gutierrez, Executive Director of Common Cause Texas, said in a statement. “The way we make that happen is to use these funds to implement online voter registration, expand vote by mail, extend early voting, recruit more election workers, and ensure all poll sites meets public health safety standards.”

“Bloomberg can keep his offices open and his staff employed--all to support Biden--with Bloomberg continuing to pay for it, but the work needs to be done independently of the Biden campaign,” Paul S. Ryan of nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause told ABC News. “In other words, Bloomberg can run a pro-Biden super PAC, using his campaign office space and campaign staff. Bloomberg's pro-Biden effort staff couldn't coordinate it's spending with the Biden campaign.”

“What Bloomberg can not do is simply merge his team and...

“Money has too much influence on our political system,” said Rey Lopez-Calderon, the executive director of California Common Cause. “Every year we see the lobbying spending increase is a year we risk disenfranchising more voters and silencing the voices of ordinary citizens.”

President Trump has been comparing the hush money payments made during his campaign to those made by John Edwards. Kristen Welker is joined by Vice President for Policy and Litigation at Common Cause, Paul Ryan, to discuss how the president’s situation compares to Edwards’ case and why that might not help him at all. Duration: 7:50

Stephen Spaulding, thuộc nhóm giám sát chính phủ Common Cause, cho biết "đôi khi vẻ ngoài của tham nhũng có thể gây tổn hại đến lòng tin, đức tin và sự tin tưởng vào chính phủ không kém gì tham nhũng thực sự." Không chỉ riêng Menendez, Spaulding cho biết việc các nhà tài trợ giàu có mua chuộc ảnh hưởng là điều quá phổ biến ở Washington, và ranh giới giữa ân huệ và hối lộ rất mơ hồ. "Và Tòa án Tối cao dưới thời Chánh án Roberts hoàn toàn không phải là ngọn hải đăng minh bạch về mặt này", Spaulding nói. "Tòa án nhìn chung đã nói rằng loại tiếp cận này và...