The Hill published an op-ed on Tuesday penned by Senator Chris Coons on his effort to address the problems that occurred at voting stations around the country during the 2012 election. The week following the general election, Chris introduced the FAST Voting Act to help states improve their elections by creating a competitive grant program to encourage states to speed election reforms. The op-ed was published in anticipation of the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday where he is poised to talk about election reform.
November’s elections were a wake-up call. Tens of thousands of Americans, including Republicans and Democrats in both “red states” and “blue states,” saw their fundamental right to vote for the candidate of their choice eroded by exceptionally long lines, confusing rules and voting-machine problems in well over a dozen states.
In the 2012 elections, we saw voting machine irregularities in Pennsylvania and Colorado. We saw errors on voter rolls in Ohio and delays in ballot counting in Arizona. We saw voters waiting in line five hours in Virginia and eight hours in Florida.
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As Americans, the right to vote is in our DNA. We have to do better than this, and we can do better if we take action now by challenging states to implement common-sense changes well before the next election.
The Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely (FAST) Voting Act, which I introduced just days after the November election, would incentivize states to turn around their poorest-performing polling places and improve the administration of their elections to make voting faster and more accessible to all voters.
Click here to read the entire op-ed on The Hill’s website.
Click here to learn more about Chris’ FAST Voting Act.