The interest group I'm talking about today is a group called Common Cause. Common Cause is a political watchdog group started in 1970 by John W. Gardner who was the former Secretary of Health, Education, Welfare under Lyndon B. Johnson. The groups core values are stated as "upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process." as they are a non-partisan group looking to government reform.
Common Cause has been an integral part to keeping the U.S. government in check with one of the former heads being part of the Watergate prosecution team! Most recently they have been fighting to remove the electoral college and instituting a popular vote based on the outcome of the 2016 election. They have also advocated for reform of voting machines believing they should have some sort of voter-verified paper trail as there have been many complaints about voting machines and how they can skewed one way or another.
They also lobbied against gerrymandering. Now for those who don't know gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries, which is most commonly used in first-past-the-post electoral systems. The gerrymandering they lobbied against specifically was that that was being done in North Carolina in 2016. They also heavily lobby for ethics in government such as when during the 2016 presidential elections, Common Cause suggested that the Clinton Foundation would create ethics and conflict of interest challenges for Hillary Clinton should she become president. They criticized Hillary Clinton's plan to give Chelsea Clinton control of the foundation and called for an independent audit and full disclosure of the foundation's donors. The public interest group also criticized Donald Trump on his refusal to release his tax returns during the 2016 presidential election. The organization has been outspoken about the potential conflicts of interest from Trump's businesses and called for Trump to put his assets into a blind trust instead of handing over control of his businesses to his children. There are also these events as well
They were the group responsible for getting congress to pass the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, requiring government officials to disclose their finances and restricting the "revolving door" between government and business. In 1989, they lobbied for passage of a new Ethics in Government Act, which ended special-interest honoraria for members of Congress and closed a loophole that allowed members to convert campaign funds to personal use.Common Cause tends to stick very true to their catch phrase "Holding power accountable"
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