Common Blog

Common Cause and our fellow voting rights advocates are celebrating Monday’s Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, while warning that more battles over voting are on the horizon. The case presented a challenge to the National Voting Registration Act of 1993, better known as the “Motor Voter Law;” the law [...]

In 1978, the Supreme Court decision in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti struck down a Massachusetts state law barring corporations from spending money to influence ballot question votes. The decision set the stage for corporations to spend millions advocating for or against ballot questions across the country. The consequences of this decision and the [...]

A new report by Common Cause Massachusetts shows that limiting outside spending in last year’s U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts helped to increased electoral transparency, accountability, and fairness, and calls on the current Senate candidates Ed Markey and Gabriel Gomez to agree to limit outside spending in the current election. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) [...]

UPDATE: (5/3/13) The House just re-passed the bill with the Senate amendments! The Governor is up next.  UPDATE: (5/2/13) We’ve made it through Third Reading in the Senate!  UPDATE: (4/19/13) The Colorado Voter Access & Modernized Elections Act passed through the Colorado House this morning. We will likely see it introduced in the Colorado Senate early [...]

(Read a recap of the hearing held by the Jont Committee on Election Laws on S.327, an omnibus election modernization package including online voter registration, pre-registration, post-election audits, and more, click here.) When the Joint Committee on Election Laws held its first hearing of the 188th General Court yesterday afternoon the testimony was clear and [...]