Cross-posted at Project Vote’s blog, Voting Matters

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

We recently wrote about the Department of Veterans Affairs decision to open its facilities to voter registration drives after months of urging by voting rights groups and elected officials. This week, however, “VA voter suppression continues,” as AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld wrote Tuesday, with voter registration efforts being blocked in California and the VA general counsel criticizing the pending Veterans Voting Support Act (S. 3308), which would bolster federal protection of voter registration opportunities for all wounded veterans. With just three weeks left to register voters in most states, advocates say now is the time to support voter registration efforts in VA facilities and, most importantly, it needs to be explicitly protected from now on through federal law.

“Credibility of VA on this issue is very low right now,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. during a hearing on the Veterans Voting Support Act on Monday, according to Rick Maze of the Army Times. VA general counsel Paul Hutter says that the VA is being “proactive” in working with election officials and nonprofit groups to facilitate voter registration, but that “VA still believes that some limits are needed.”

These limits were enforced this week at a San Francisco VA facility when the nonprofit group Veterans for Peace was blocked from helping register voters in time for the 2008 presidential election. According to Rosenfeld, the group filed a legal motion in California federal court Monday, claiming that VA was trying to require Veterans for Peace members to go through the same screening process that VA volunteers must go through – a process that would delay registration efforts. “In contrast, the VA does not require screening for most other visitors,” Rosenfeld says.

Citing testimony from the Senate Rules and Administration hearing on S. 3308, the motion notes that of the 5.5 million patients in VA facilities, volunteers registered only 350 patients and 64 outpatients. “Those statistics show the VA’s internal process of screening volunteers who are then approved to register voters has had the effect of suppressing the vote of injured veterans in 2008,” writes  Rosenfeld.

As VA voter registration is administered solely at the whim of the VA itself, advocates warn that, without a federal mandate to provide voter registration and information to the nation’s wounded veterans, their right to vote could easily be lost. “VA can easily reverse course, again, and issue another policy banning voting assistance,” or could “easily fail to implement their new policy,” says Veterans for Common Sense executive director and S. 3308 supporter, Paul Sullivan.

Hutter claims a broad interpretation of the proposed law would open VA facilities as a voter registration agency to the public, potentially disrupting VA facilities and invading privacy of patients. Feinstein says that the intent of the bill is not to serve the public and that she is willing to make amendments.

“However, she did not see disruption as a major problem,” Maze writes, “because setting up a voter registration drive could be as simple as putting a table in the lobby of a hospital or clinic.”

In a recent New York Times report announcing the new VA policy, writer Ian Urbina quotes Sen. Feinstein: “Given the sacrifices that the men and women who have fought in our armed services have made, providing easy access to voter registration services is the very least we can do.”

The companion bill to S. 3308, H.R. 6625 passed the House by voice vote on Wednesday.

Quick Links:

S 3308: Veterans Voting Support Act

Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

H.R. 6625: Veterans Voting Support Act

Rep. Robert A. Brady, D-Penn.

Veterans for Peace

Veterans for Common Sense

In Other News:

Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands – Wired

Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.

Ohio Republicans Use Lawsuit To Fight for State’s Crucial Votes – Wall Street Journal

The Ohio Republican Party spearheaded a lawsuit Friday over a directive from the office of Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that would allow some early voters to register and vote on the same day.

Democrats accuse state GOP of hypocrisy – Wisconsin State Journal

Democratic Party Chairman Joe Wineke said Monday it was hypocritical for Republicans to defend mistakes in their mailing databases while pursuing a lawsuit over the state’s flawed voter registration system.

ACLU: Mississippi felons denied voting rights – Associated Press

JACKSON – Convicted felons in Mississippi are denied their constitutional right to vote in presidential elections, the American Civil Liberties Union alleges in a federal lawsuit filed Friday.

Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).

(Now cross-posted at dKos and MyDD. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

John Doolittle is who he is.  He’s not really going to change because he got a bit of a scare in the 2006 elections.  He still opposes labor regulations in the Mariana Islands.  His ethics are still, um, well, less than respectable.  And, oh yeah, he was extremely slow to support our veterans.  In fact, the Disabled American Veterans gives him a stellar rating of 50.  I call that failing.  Sure he’ll send our troops to war, but support them when they come home, why bother?  Why bother to make an effort? Why give a portion of your campaign donations to veterans charities like Charlie Brown is doing this Monday (PDF)? I mean, you could give 15% to your wife for “fund raising”, that’ll help you buy a nicer house, dude! Golly, Democrats are so stupid, they could be doing so much more to pillage the government!

See, that’s the thing about many of these hawks.  They are cool with authorizing money when it makes them look tough. But what are you prepared to do when these people come home. Or forty years later when those veterans need the medical care that comes with old age.  When you keep a standing army, you must make a commitment to those people. You owe them that much.

This brings me to the story of my friend, we shall call him Bill.  Bill was a veteran of the Korean War Days, and is getting up there in years. He’s in great shape; he’s had very few illnesses or injuries. Sometimes I marvel at how healthy he is considering the remarkable life that he has had.  He’s not won any Nobel prizes, but he works hard every day. And I mean that.

So, Bill discovers that he needs to get surgery.  Now, it’s nothing major, but causes pain and substantial discomfort.  Tolerable, but nothing that you would want to tolerate.  So, after a couple of appointments to make sure that they have everything diagnosed correctly, they schedule a surgery appointment for Bill.  EIGHT MONTHS AWAY! In November of this year.  It seems that the San Francisco Veterans Hospital, one of the larger VA hospitals, only has one day’s worth of a surgeon. He works 4 days at UCSF.  One surgeon for the entirety of the Bay Area.  The situation was the same at the Sacramento VA Hospital. 

Of course, he is eligible for Medicare, but he can’t afford the deductible.  He was promised by his country that he would receive health care, but his government has failed him.  When our soldiers came home in the past, they had a plethora of services.  Sure, those same services are still available, but what good are they if they are so ridiculously understaffed as to be a joke.

And so, the President lingers on, fighting a War of Choice, but not choosing to fight for Veterans.  And all the while Doolittle cheers him on in the background.  I can think of no more apt word than “unconscionable.”