Common Blog

I attended oral argument on Wednesday in Shelby County v. Holder, the case challenging the Section 5 “pre-clearance” provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act. Common Cause joined in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of upholding the law. Keep in mind: the Supreme Court has affirmed the constitutionality of Section [...]

The final vote to get this on the ballot is tomorrow – Tuesday, January 29th! The city attorney has drafted language for the city council to vote on and it’s exactly the type of model that we will want to promote to other cities across California and the entire country. We cannot emphasize enough how significant this will be for the movement if it’s on the ballot.

The Attorney General highlights the importance of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and calls for further modernizations to our elections.

Our system of government is based on the idea of checks and balances — each branch of government acts as a check on the others. But when it comes to ethics enforcement, there is no one and nothing to check on the Supreme Court. We can do better. We must do better.

Money may talk, but when citizens only know what it is saying rather than who is saying it, we have a supreme kind of problem at all levels of our government.