Dept. of Veterans Affairs Changes Policy on Helping Wounded Soldiers Register to Vote

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted May 1, 2008.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued new rules allowing former soldiers living at VA facilities to ask for help with registering to vote and voting -- a decision that could increase participation in the 2008 election by wounded Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.

The new rules, to be published on government websites this week, reverses a years-long policy where the VA opposed helping patients and others living on VA campuses -- notably homeless veterans -- with voter registration and voting, saying to do so would be a partisan activity.

"It is VHA policy to assist patients who seek to exercise their right to register and vote," said the new policy, issued by the Veterans Health Administration as Directive 2008-023. "This policy establishes a uniform approach to assembling and providing information on voter registration and voting to veterans who request it."

Under the directive, VA facilities "must ensure" there is a "written, published policy on voter assistance" that allows patients to leave the facility to register and vote, subject to their physician's approval; provides help for registering and voting by absentee ballot; and informs patients that voting assistance is available. It states, "This also needs to be done when the patient is admitted to the facility."

The directive says any VA "personnel (including volunteers)" must review and sign a "Political Activities Fact Sheet" provided by the Office of General Counsel. It also says "any request by an outside organization to hold a voter registration drive on VA property" will be reviewed by the VA's attorneys, but it does not state how quickly the agency must respond to registration drive requests.

Advocates for veterans' voting rights praised the new VA policy.

"VA's new directive is progress," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, whose mission has long included advocating for former soldiers' voting rights. "They changed from actively opposing it to passively supporting it."

"I think is an enormous first step," said Scott Rafferty, a Washington-based attorney who has been fighting the VA in court over the issue since 2004. "Until today, VA policy prohibited staff members from assisting disabled vets who needed help to obtain and fill out voter registration forms. This changes that. That's the good news."

Both Sullivan and Rafferty said the policy's impact would lay in its implementation.

For example, merely posting the new policy in small-print type in the corner of hospital wards and not asking vets if they wanted to register would not change much, Rafferty said, who said the directive did not indicate if the VA would offer the opportunity to register to vote to millions of elderly veterans who come to VA facilities for annual checkups and to renew their prescriptions.

"They also need to reach out to the veterans who live in shelters on VA property who may not be patients," Rafferty said, "and they need to tell veterans who move to VA campuses that they will be purged (from voter rolls) unless they correct their voter registration forms."

Sullivan said his organization would be watching to see how quickly the VA's attorneys would process requests from third-party groups for conducting voter registration drives at VA facilities.

"Veterans for Common Sense plans to follow VA's actions closely in order to make sure that VA's lawyers expeditiously review requests for voter registration drives," he said. "We also hope VA will establish a single national policy so that there is consistent implementation at the local level."

The VA announcement also comes as top election officials in several states, notably California, were poised to ask the VA to designate itself as a voter registration agency, like motor vehicle departments, under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Those requests come on top of persistent pressure from Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., to assist wounded veterans to register to vote.

The two senators, who had written to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James B. Peake in March -- only to receive a response later in the month stating that there would be no change in policy -- also praised the new VA policy in a statement issued late Wednesday.

"The VA directive seems to be a dramatic turnaround in granting veterans the access to voter registration that they rightfully deserve," Sen. Feinstein said. "This directive would require that all VA facilities develop comprehensive voter registration plans to assist veterans in voting. Given the sacrifices that these men and women have made, providing easy access to voter registration services is the very least we can do."

"I am hopeful that this apparent reversal will be one large step forward in the fight to protect the right of America's veterans to vote," Sen. Kerry said. "We will continue to monitor this situation motivated by one and only one principle: Those who fight for democracy overseas shouldn't have to fight for democracy here at home."

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Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of "What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election" (The New Press, 2006).

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