Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson called Tuesday for the Senate to hold hearings across Florida and other states where Republican-led legislative majorities approved strict new voting standards.

Nelson first made his request last week, in a letter to Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Democrat heading a judiciary subcommittee overseeing the constitution and civil rights. But he echoed his demand Tuesday before the full Senate.

 “No state should have the right to make a law if it abridges people’s basic rights,” said Nelson, who wants the hearings held in Florida and 13 other states that have enacted new voting laws.

Boca Raton Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch last summer called for congressional hearings into the changes, which Democrats and their allies say are designed to block and disenfranchise voters, particularly minorities and Democratic-leaning college students.

The goal of these Republican-ruled state legislatures is to reduce voter turnout in next year’s presidential contest, critics say. The ACLU and other voting rights groups have already sued to stop implementation of the law.  A study by the Brennan Center for Justice found the laws could keep 5 million people from voting next year.

Supporters of the measures deny any partisan motivation, instead saying the stricter standards are intended to reduce voter-fraud.

Civil rights advocates are asking the clemency board to hold off on changes to the state’s restoration of rights for felons scheduled for a vote Wednesday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week she was drafting a proposed rule change eliminating Florida’s limited automatic restoration of rights for felons convicted of non-violent crimes, approved by the executive clemency board under former Gov. Charlie Crist’s urging nearly four years ago.

But the sweeping changes proposed by Bondi, including a wait period of three to five years before felons can apply to have their rights – including the right to vote – restored have not yet been released just two work days before the scheduled vote.

In a letter to board members Bondi, Gov. Rick Scott, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, ACLU of Florida executive director Howard Simon asked the clemency board to delay the vote until the public has time to scrutinize them.

“The combination of suddenness, speed and lack of details have created an environment in which needed input is locked out or sitting on the side waiting to review, analyze and offer suggestions and counsel,” Simon wrote to each of the board members. “There is no emergency that requires action at your meeting next week. Rule changes can be made at any time.”

Simon, who met with Bondi earlier this week, wants the board to get public input before doing away with the current system.

“Any changes will impact Florida families and public safety for years to come. It’s more important to get the process and policy right than to get it done quickly,” he wrote.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is not backing away from her proposal to do away with Florida’s limited automatic restoration of rights for nonviolent felons after meeting with civil rights advocates today.

But she did say she supported uncoupling current employment restrictions that prevent convicted felons from getting certain occupational licenses unless their civil rights are restored, a lengthy process that could get even more cumbersome if Bondi gets her way.

ACLU of Florida executive director Howard Simon and Dale Landry, vice president of NAACP Florida conference, met with Bondi for about an hour to discuss proposed clemency rule changes among other things.

The meeting was friendly, Simon said, but Bondi refused to budge on her desire to force felons to wait three to five years to apply to have their rights restored.

“This is a huge problem for the state of Florida,” Simon told reporters afterward. “We’re only going to increase the problem by delaying the period of time for the restoration of civil rights.”

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Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to meet with Howard Simon, the executive director of the Florida ACLU, tomorrow in what could be a contentious show-down over restoration of felons’ rights.

Bondi, elected in November, said after her first clemency meeting last week she wants to do away with the state’s limited automatic restoration of rights for felons convicted of non-violent crimes. And she wants to reinstate a three-to-five year waiting period before felons who’ve completed their sentences can appeal to the clemency board to have their rights restored.

Bondi’s announcement last week stunned civil rights advocates who’ve been trying to get the board to make it even easier for felons to have their rights restored.

Nearly 50 years after civil rights struggles rocked St. Augustine, Gov. Charlie Crist and the rest of the state Clemency Board issued an apology to hundreds of black activists – some of them schoolchildren -as their first action at their final meeting this morning.

Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson approved the resolution expressing “profound regret” and clearing the way for hundreds of civil rights activists arrested in 1963 and 1964 to have their records expunged.

“I think it makes a great statement about where Florida is today versus where part of Florida was back then,” Crist said this morning.

Sen. Tony Hill, a black Democrat from Jacksonville, asked Crist to sponsor the resolution after he failed to convince lawmakers to pass a bill clearing the civil rights activists’ records.

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