[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15773-15774]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1030
                      PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO VOTE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, Americans turned out in record 
numbers this past election day, November 6, to exercise our most 
cherished and fundamental right, the right to vote.
  No doubt my colleagues heard from their constituents who endured, in 
many cases, outrageously long lines. I spoke with voters who reported 
having to wait two or more hours, and in some cases up to 5 hours, to 
cast that precious vote. In most cases, the absence of early voting and 
the shortage of voting machines and well-trained election volunteers 
were the primary culprits leading to unacceptably long lines.
  Whether one lived in a blue or red State, or voted in an urban, 
suburban or rural precinct, residents at polling places in more than a 
dozen States, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, New 
York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Montana, Tennessee, 
Hawaii, Arizona, Rhode Island, and my own Commonwealth of Virginia, 
encountered significant, yet avoidable, barriers to casting their 
ballots.
  This is not a Republican or a Democratic problem. Voters from both 
parties were affected. This is truly a national bipartisan challenge, 
if not a crisis. And to quote President Obama: ``It's one we have to 
fix.''
  I think about the employee who struggles to manage his commute or her 
commute and work schedule on election day, or the senior citizen who 
may not have had the stamina to stand in line for 5 hours, or the young 
working mom waiting to vote, worried about the fact that she won't get 
to the front of the line in time to pick up her kids at daycare.
  The experience of our constituents on election day amount to a 
modern-day poll tax on all Americans that must be eliminated. Twelve 
years after the 2000 Presidential election exposed the deep structural 
problems that plague our decentralized voting system, our troubles 
appear to have worsened, not improved.
  Long waits in the cold or the heat, confusing and conflicting 
instructions from poorly trained election officials, a paucity of 
voting machines or malfunctioning machines showing their age, a 
shortage of paper ballots, absentee ballots that failed to reach 
civilian and military voters in time were among the litany of voting 
problems that came to a head on election day.
  I saw the problem firsthand at polling places in my district as I 
visited with voters in one Prince William County precinct who had been 
waiting in line for more than 4 hours in the cold. That's why I joined 
with Congressman Jim Langevin to introduce the Fair, Accurate, Secure 
and Timely Voting Act of 2012, the FAST Act. A Senate companion bill 
was introduced by Senators Chris Coons of Delaware, Mark Warner of 
Virginia and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
  Representative Langevin and I have significant experience serving at 
the State and local levels, and we strongly believe that the Federal 
Government often works best when it leverages those laboratories of 
democracy at the local and State levels to test innovative solutions 
and governing reforms and best practices that might have applicability 
at the Federal level.

[[Page 15774]]

  Consistent with this principle, our bill avoids overly prescriptive 
requirements and, instead, offers States a menu of options and 
financial incentives to adopt voting reforms.
  Our FAST Voting Act recognizes that modernizing the Nation's voting 
system will require collaborative and coordinated efforts at the State, 
Federal, and local levels. It creates a competitive grant program, 
similar to the President's Race to the Top schools initiative, and 
rewards those States that aggressively implement the most effective and 
promising reforms to expand the franchise.
  The menu of reforms includes flexible voter registration 
opportunities, including same-day registration; early voting, with a 
minimum of at least 9 days before the election; no-excuse absentee 
voting; assistance to voters who do not speak English as a primary 
language; assistance to voters with disabilities, including the 
visually impaired; effective access to voting for members of the Armed 
Services; formal training of election officials, including State and 
county administrators and volunteers; auditing and reducing waiting 
times at polling stations; creating contingency plans for voting in the 
event of a natural or other kind of disaster.
  To be clear, the FAST Act is the latest in a series of proposals to 
reform how our elections are administered. Given the renewed interest 
among the public, Members of Congress, and the President, we ought to 
at least move forward with hearings to debate the merits of these 
proposals.
  This is the world's greatest and oldest democracy. How can any of us 
be satisfied with the scandalous operations that occurred in all too 
many voting places that impaired the ability of Americans, free 
Americans, to freely cast their vote?
  We ought to clean this up. It's a solvable problem, and it ought to 
be solved on a bipartisan basis.

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