Nine Senators, Including Obama, Introduce Bill to Help Vets Register to Vote

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted July 23, 2008.

Nine Democratic senators introduced a bill Tuesday to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to offer voter registration services to former soldiers living at VA facilities, which the agency has rejected as being too partisan and interfering with their medical mission.

The bill's lead sponsors, Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John Kerry, D-Mass., have been urging the VA for several years to be a voter registration agency like state motor vehicle departments, where government employees ask the public if they are registered to vote and would like assistance to do so. Under current VA policy, the responsibility to register to vote lies with the former soldiers, who, like all voters, must update their voter registration information any time they change residence.

The other seven senators co-sponsoring the "Veterans Voting Support Act" are Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

"This is about giving those who have fought to spread democracy and freedom the right to exercise that freedom in the voting booth," Feinstein said. "I believe the cost of providing voter materials is minimal. And given the sacrifices that these men and women have made, providing easy access to voter registration services is the very least we can do."

"It shouldn't have taken a legislative solution to fix a bureaucratic problem, but that's what it's come down to in the name of common sense and patriotism," Kerry said. "Making it easier, not harder, for veterans to vote is the least we can do in our democracy for those who fought for democracy around the globe. The cost of getting these voter materials to veterans is tiny, but its meaning is bigger than any of us."

The issue of removing impediments to voting for veterans has gathered momentum in recent weeks and months. Earlier this spring, the VA announced that it would assist any veteran who asked for help with voter registration and voting. It also announced that the VA would permit voter registration drives by groups that were vetted by the agency's attorneys, but it reversed that policy within two weeks of issuing it.

The VA response, by Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake, came in the form of letters and policy directives sent to the senators. The explanations given -- that voter registration drives were too "partisan" and would interfere with its medical mission -- have triggered critical reactions from the senators and from many top state election officials who have been asking the VA to become a voter registration agency. Before the current Bush presidency, VA facilities across the country mostly allowed voter registration drives and other proactive efforts to help former soldiers vote, according to congressional lawyers who have researched the issue.

The VA has declined every request by AlterNet to comment on this issue.

Nationwide, the VA operates 155 medical centers, 135 nursing homes, 717 ambulatory care and outpatient clinics, 45 residential rehabilitation programs and 289 nonmedical vet centers, according to the agency's 2008 fiscal budget request.

In recent weeks, the VA has come under increasing pressure from top state election officials to offer voter registration services. In May, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen asked Peake to designate VA facilities in her state -- where an ongoing federal lawsuit on the issue is in the final stages of an appeal -- as a voter registration agency like motor vehicle departments. Then, in early July, Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz and the state's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, were barred by the VA from entering a VA facility to register voters. They registered vets on the building's steps, including a 92-year-old World II veteran who said, "There was nobody here to do this last year."

Bysiewicz, whose state has its own state-run veterans homes where voter registration has never been a problem, then organized a campaign among top state election officials to urge the VA to change its policy. To date, two dozen top state election officials -- from both parties -- have signed a letter urging the VA allow voter registration drives. The National Association of Secretaries of State is meeting in Michigan this weekend and will consider a resolution urging the VA to offer the registration opportunities.

In the meantime, other prominent political leaders and voting rights advocates have refuted the VA's primary objections and also called for a change in policy. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and chair of a subcommittee overseeing the Hatch Act, which limits political activities by federal employees during business hours on government property, wrote to Peake, saying groups, partisan or not, could conduct registration drives without violating the Hatch Act.

See more stories tagged with: senate, veterans affairs, registering to vote

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, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

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