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VA should allow voter drives
Aug 11, 11:59 AM
A New Haven Register editorial
There is no reasonable explanation for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ national ban on nonpartisan voter registration drives and voter education at its hospitals, nursing homes and homeless shelters.
The ban was imposed in May in what may be a last gasp of political partisanship by a Republican administration worried that any effort to increase the number of voters might help Democrats in November’s election; or it may be the result of overly cautious bureaucrats who have ended up blocking veterans’ access to the ballot.
Both of these explanations are more plausible than the one offered by the VA that the registration drives would violate the Hatch Act, which bars political activity by federal employees. But, the law has no bearing on hospital patients. Before Veterans Affairs Secretary James P. Peake banned nonpartisan voter registration drives in the May 5 order, allowing them had been up to individual managers of VA facilities.
Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut’s secretary of the state, and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal went to the West Haven VA Medical Center to dramatize that under the VA’s new rule, Bysiewicz could not tell patients how to use the new, optical scan voting machines or urge anyone to vote or encourage patients to register as voters.
Blumenthal said the state would sue if the ban on nonpartisan voter registration drives is not reversed. Last Thursday, they returned and Bysiewicz conducted a voter education session after Blumenthal negotiated a local waiver of the ban.
Bysiewicz, the state’s chief elections officer, has been joined by her counterparts, both Democrats and Republicans, in 20 other states in asking that the ban be dropped.
Legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Christopher Murphy, D-5, would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow nonpartisan voter registration drives. The legislation has been approved by the House Committee on Administration. The legislation offers a uniform solution, if the VA persists with the ban, that is better than each state threatening to sue to force nonpartisan efforts to get out the vote.
