The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to examine Americans’ access to the voting booth and the continuing need for protections against efforts to limit or suppress voting.
On Wednesday, the committee will look at barriers voters experienced in the 2012 election — some reports said voters in Florida waited seven hours to cast their ballots. Democrats have said the some Republican controlled state legislatures passed laws last year that harm voter rights and the results were shown in Election Day failures.
“A spate of recently passed state voting laws seemed designed to restrict voting by making it harder for millions of disabled, young, minority, rural, elderly, homeless, and low income Americans to vote,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “The long-lines, increased use of provisional ballots and changes to voter registration rules in the last elections have raised new and troubling questions about the ability to protect every eligible citizen’s right to vote.”
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