Hillary Clinton calls for changes to voting laws

The recent Republican-supported election laws that make it harder for America's poor, young and minority members to vote should be changed, said Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton Thursday during a stump speech here.

Clinton lashed out against restrictive voting laws which she said were instigated and enacted by Republican legislatures in her address to a crowd of mostly black students at the historically black Texas Southern University in Houston, the nation's fourth largest city, according to ABC13 TV reports.

She appealed to put an end to those laws, which she called a "sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people."

Republicans are "systematically and deliberately" trying to make it difficult for citizens to vote, she said, adding that the United States should take drastic steps to expand voting rights, with universal, automatic voter registration and a new national standard requiring nearly three weeks of early in-person voting.

Every citizen aged 18 and older throughout the United States should be automatically registered and allowed to vote at their neighborhood polling places, Clinton said, unless they voluntarily abdicate their suffrage.

She also proposed prolonging early in-person voting to 20 days including weekends and evening voting periods when more working people could vote, in order to expand opportunities for larger crowds in every state.

In recent years, there has been a battle regarding voting restrictions passed into laws by Republican legislatures in Texas and other states. While Republicans have called the restrictions necessary to thwart voter fraud, Democrats have posed legal challenges to laws that restrict early voting or mandate total facial photo identification.

About 20 million people voted early in the 2014 elections while one-third of all 50 states do not have early voting, including Clinton's home state of New York.

After Clinton's speech, some Republicans were quick to condemn her battle against voter restrictions as vindication for voter fraud.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a Democratic fundraising organization, issued a petition and an appeal for donations on Thursday that accused Republicans of using underhanded tactics to deny "the unfettered right to vote" for every American.

Clinton's speech was part of a two-day tour and fundraiser scheduled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as well as Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio in Texas.

Clinton was the Secretary of State for President Barack Obama's government between 2009 and 2013. This is her second campaign to gain the Democratic presidential candidacy, while the first failed against Obama, who went on to win his first of two terms as president in 2008. Endi