Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will testify about the electoral process in Florida on Wednesday before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington. Crist left the Republican Party at the end of his gubernatorial term in 2010 to run for the U.S. Senate as an independent when it became apparent he would lose the primary to Marco Rubio. Last week he registered as a Democrat and he has told The Palm Beach Post he is weighing whether to run for governor as a Democrat in 2014. Crist has been critical of changes made to Florida election laws by the GOP-controlled legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott in the past two years.
Those changes included reducing early voting days, making it harder for persons to vote if they changed counties but didn’t change their voter registration and attempts to proscribe the activities of voter registration organizations, such as the League of Women Voters.
Florida GOP officials said those changes were made to fight voter fraud and save money. But former state GOP chairman Jim Greer told The Post last month that he attended meetings in 2009, not long after the 2008 victory in Florida by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, during which GOP staffers and consultants discussed changes that needed to be made to electoral laws in order to suppress voting by Democrats, especially minority voters. Greer is currently under indictment for allegedly stealing money from the party and his charges have been dismissed by a GOP spokesperson as revenge against the party.
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