Common Blog

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) [...]

(Read a recap of the hearing held by the Jont Committee on Election Laws on early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, click here.) After a successful hearing on early voting and no-excuse absentee voting two weeks ago, the Joint Committee on Election Laws reconvened last Wednesday for its second hearing of the legislative session. It heard [...]

(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 [...]

Common Cause Massachusetts is proud to partner with the New Organizing Institute (NOI), ACLU Massachusetts, MassVOTE and others to host RootsCamp Massachusetts on April 6-7. RootsCamp is an open space “un-conference” for activists to share lessons learned, discuss best practices, and discover opportunities for collaboration. It’s an “un-conference” because there is no pre-set agenda; instead [...]

The Massachusetts Legislature just received a failing grade from the Sunlight Foundation for the transparency and accessibility on its website. There were many flaws that warranted the “F” grade. Committee and floor roll call votes are not posted on-line in a searchable format. The site is difficult to navigate. And historical information is often unavailable. This [...]