Mrs Hillary Clinton strongly advocates for Voting Reform in USA

Mrs Hillary Clinton strongly advocates for Voting Reform in USA 

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received  the Barbara Jordan Public-Private Leadership Award at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas June 4, 2015 and advocated strongly for immediate voting reform in USA.

She recalled her days on the 1972 voter registration drive in Texas and characterized eligible voters as eager to participate in democracy.

Reviewing the Count Every Vote Act that she sponsored in the Senate, she noted that it called for election day to be a federal holiday, mandated early voting opportunities, proposed making it a federal crime to deceive and mislead voters with fraudulent flyers, and restored voting rights to former offenders who had served their time and paid their debt.

Because since the Supreme Court eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, many of the states that previously faced special scrutiny because of a history of racial discrimination have proposed and passed new laws that make it harder than ever to vote

She called for reforms including:

• expanded absentee and early voting;
• online registration;
• cutting delays;
• 20 days of early in-person voting;
• weekend voting;
• universal automatic voter registration at 18 (She noted that 1/4 to 1/3 of those eligible are not registered);
• Abatement of the blizzard of old-fashioned paperwork in favour of streamlined, technology-assisted documentation.

In South Carolina, for example, there’s supposed to be one machine for every 250 voters. But in minority areas, that rule is just often overlooked. In Richland Country, nearly 90 percent of the precincts failed to meet the standard required by law in 2012. Instead of 250 voters per machine, in one precinct it was more than 430 voters per machine. Not surprisingly, people trying to cast a ballot there faced massive delays.

That’s why, as a Senator, I championed a bill called the Count Every Vote Act. If it had become law, it would have made Election Day a federal holiday and mandated early voting opportunities.

 

We need more Justices on the Supreme Court who will protect every citizen’s right to vote, I mean the principle underlying our Constitution, which we had to fight for a long time to make apply to everybody, one person, one vote and we need a Supreme Court that cares more about protecting the right to vote of a person than the right to buy and election of a corporation.