By Mark Schlueb

TAMPA — Voting-rights advocates testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee Friday about a state law passed last year they say makes Florida "the voter suppression capital of the United States."

The accusations of a deliberate effort by Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature to make it harder for minorities and the poor to vote came at a rare field hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights in Tampa.

Subcommittee chairman Dick Durbin, D-IL, called the hearing in Tampa at the behest of Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, to gather testimony about new voting laws passed in Florida and other states.

"These new voting laws appear to be part of a coordinated and well-funded effort to reduce turnout among specific groups of people, namely minority, young, low-income and rural voters …. These new state voting laws threaten to keep 5 million Americans from voting this year," Durbin said.

Among other things, Florida's voter law cuts the number of days for early voting from 14 to eight; restricts the ability of voters who have moved to change their address at the polls; and imposes tough new guidelines for voter-registration drives and harsh penalties for those who violate them.

Much of the testimony — for and against — came from two county supervisors of elections from Central Florida: Mike Ertel from Seminole and Ann McFall from Volusia, both Republicans.

Ertel said election supervisors at the county level want people to register, are happy to help third-party groups with registration drives and strive to ensure that all votes are counted. Florida's voting laws are fair and open, he said.

He called accusations of purposeful voter suppression "fear-mongering."

"The cold facts are, in every single election, at least half the candidates lose, and not all of them want to blame their campaign. So they look at the process," Ertel said.

But McFall disagreed. She pointed to the new requirement that voter drives must submit registration forms within 48 hours, down from 10 days, or risk a fine of as much as $1,000. McFall said she was forced to report two people — one a teacher who had helped students register — who had inadvertently missed the deadline.

The new guidelines have prompted some organizations, including the nonpartisan League of Women Voters, to suspend registration drives.

McFall also said reducing the early-voting period will actually cost her office an estimated $50,000 more per election, because some employees will have to work overtime to cover the extended hours on days the polls are open in Volusia.

The new law ended early voting on the Sunday before Election Day. That's a day when large numbers of African Americans cast ballots in the past — particularly in 2008 — often as a result of "Souls to Polls" efforts at black churches that bus and carpool members to polling places.

"This bill was and is seen as a highly partisan effort by the Republican majority to tilt the electoral process to favor the Republican Party," said former state Sen. Bruce Smathers, who served as secretary of state in the 1970s.

Florida's law is already the subject of two federal lawsuits. Before Friday's hearing, civil-rights advocates called on the federal government to intervene.

With dozens of demonstrators and counter-demonstrators outside, state leaders of the ACLU, NAACP, Rainbow Push Coalition, Orlando-based Federation of Congregations United to Serve, and other groups said the law presents obstacles to voting unprecedented since the civil rights-era Jim Crow laws.

"We want to make sure they know that Florida is the voter disfranchisement and voter suppression capital of the United States," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "There are more people who are blocked out of the vote in Florida than the total number of people who have participated in the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary and the South Carolina primary."

Durbin invited Gov. Rick Scott and Republican leaders from the Legislature to testify, but they did not appear. Ertel, the only one to provide positive testimony, became something of a punching bag for Durbin and Nelson.

Ertel said African Americans are actually least likely to vote on Sundays. But that was contrary to other studies, and he acknowledged that his statistics were based on the first five days of the current Republican primary, which draws relatively few black voters.