Cross-posted at Project Vote’s blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update
By Erin Ferns
“Someone needs to the tell the VA that veterans don’t check their citizenship rights at the door when they enter a VA facility,” editorialized the Sacramento Bee on Sunday, referring to the continued refusal of the Department of Veterans Affairs to assist with voter registration. The Calif. publication urged the VA to change a policy restricting voter registration drives before October registration deadlines for the 2008 presidential election.
Succumbing to political and public pressure in late April, the VA agreed to provide voter registration and voting opportunities for wounded veterans, wrote Steven Rosenfeld in a recent AlterNet report. Soon thereafter, the VA retracted the new policy, opting to restrict voter registration to only those who ‘request it.’ Insisting that voter registration is “not part of the agency’s core mission,” the agency moved to block voter registration drives to “avoid disruptions to facility operations,’” according to the Bee.
“U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been a bulldog in exposing vote-suppression tactics over the last eight years, is on to this game. In a May 6 letter, she wrote, ‘We would appreciate knowing the type of disruptions the VA envisions might occur during voter registration drives by nonpartisan organizations, such as the League of Women Voters or veterans’ organizations, and why any potential disruption could not be addressed by less-restrictive means,” the Bee reported.
Both veteran and voting rights advocates charge that the VA’s decision to deny voter registration drives was a political move.
“This is yet another action from the Bush administration that imposes barriers to registration and voting in front of Americans they don’t trust to vote for preferred candidates,” said Project Vote deputy director, Michael Slater, in the AlterNet report. “Government, regardless of what party controls it, has a monopoly over the mechanisms of registration and voting and they hold that responsibility in trust for the public. The Bush administration has repeatedly allowed their political interests to trump their obligations to the public and now, it seems, veterans are the latest victims.”
Just before the VA issued the first (and now nullified) voter registration policy in late April, Project Vote blogged on Rosenfeld’s reports exposing the lack of National Voter Registration Act enforcement not only at federal agencies like VA hospitals (where compliance is implied but not required), but also state public assistance agencies.
“‘America, among western democracies, is unique in putting the responsibility on the individual, not the state, to register voters,'” said Project Vote Deputy Director Michael Slater. “‘Today, 63 million Americans, about a third of eligible voting age population, are not registered to vote.
“‘When we try to shift the onus from the individual to the state, we see reluctance — and the VA is one example,’ Slater said, saying that many state social service agencies that already are required to offer voter registration opportunities to public aid recipients have not followed through.” For example, if California registered as many food stamp recipients as Oregon, there would be an additional 180,000 voters in the state, he said.
“There is just this huge potential if government agencies like the VA finally offered voter registration.”
“Whether they’re at the Sacramento VA Medical Center or the VA rehab center in Martinez, veterans should be able to register to vote,” the Bee editorialized. “Certainly, administrators can set a time and place for voter-registration activities so as not to disrupt the life of a rehab center or assisted-living facility. This routinely happens at nonprofit, private and state-run facilities. Why not at federal VA facilities?”
Quick Links:
Department of Veterans Affairs
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Summary of the National Voter Registration Act, Project Vote. March 2006.
In Other News:
Voter Registration Hits a New High – KPBS [San Diego]
California’s Secretary of State Debra Bowen says the number of registered voters in the state exceeds 16 million for the first time in 3 years.
Challenge to photo ID law tries again – Morris News Service
ATLANTA — Anyone thinking the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on a recent voter ID law settled the matter would be wrong. The Georgia Democratic Party has launched a state and a federal assault last week by filing a new lawsuit in Fulton Superior Court, and a revival of an old one in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The same Atlanta lawyer, Emmet J. Bondurant filed both.
Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).
