{"id":18110,"date":"2012-11-19T12:12:31","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T17:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18110"},"modified":"2012-11-19T09:40:44","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T14:40:44","slug":"democratic-lawmakers-propose-bills-to-combat-long-voter-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18110","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Lawmakers Propose Bills To Combat Long Voter Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Senator<\/strong> <strong>Chris Coons<\/strong> (D-DE) and <strong>Rep. George Miller <\/strong>(D-CA) have both proposed legislation aimed at shortening long lines on Election Day.<\/p>\n<p>In the light of infamously slow voting lines that plagued states like Florida and Ohio this year, <strong>Coons<\/strong> introduced the Louis L. Redding Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act of 2012.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s modeled after <strong>President Obama\u2019s<\/strong> Race to the Top education program and it will reward states with federal grants if they make voting a quicker and more efficient process.<\/p>\n<p>Besides long lines at the polls, which some people waited in for up to nine hours, this election season also had shorter early-voting periods, photo ID and poll location confusion, and reports of uncounted ballots.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coons<\/strong> hasn\u2019t set a dollar amount for the grants yet, but in order to qualify for them states would need to improve their voting process by:<\/p>\n<p>Providing flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration; Providing early voting, at a minimum of 9 of the 10 calendar days preceding an election;\u00a0 Providing absentee voting, including no-excuse absentee voting;\u00a0 Providing assistance to voters who do not speak English as a primary language; and\u00a0 Providing assistance to voters with disabilities, including visual impairment.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) have both proposed legislation aimed at shortening long lines on Election Day. In the light of infamously slow voting lines that plagued states like Florida and Ohio this year, Coons introduced the Louis L. Redding Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act of 2012. It\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}