VA Tells Court It Can't Imagine Voter Registration Drives for Its Wounded Veterans and the Homeless

[marmar]

from AlterNet:



Veterans Affairs Tells Court It Can't Imagine Voter Registration Drives for Its Wounded Veterans and the Homeless

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted June 12, 2008.

The VA's attorney tells a federal appeals court that voters registration drives are a partisan distraction.



An attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs hospitals and homeless shelters for veterans, told a federal appeals court Thursday that the VA could not conceive of any circumstance where voter registration drives could occur at its facilities.

"This is an activity that could be seen as harming the appearance of the VA's neutrality," said Owen Martikan, assistant U.S. attorney representing the agency, adding voter registration drives would interfere with patient medical care and also violate the federal Hatch Act, which limits federal employees from participating in political campaign activities.

"If you cure the problem of overt partisanship, you are creating another problem," Martikan said. "Once you let in someone else, you are not being neutral unless you let everyone in."

But Scott Rafferty, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who has spent several years arguing the VA must allow voter registration drives to help wounded former soldiers register and vote, disagreed.

"Integrating veterans into the communities that they live in is the highest honor we can award veterans," Rafferty told the court.

The issue before a federal appeals court in San Francisco is whether restrictions on voter registration drives at the VA's campus in nearby Menlo Park are unconstitutional.

The case has national significance. The VA has facilities across the country serving thousands of veterans. In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton ordered the VA to help register veterans. However, the VA ceased allowing voter registration drives during the Bush administration. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/88012/

[yardwork]

1. Killing, wounding, and destroying the lives of American soldiers: ok

Enabling wounded veterans to vote for the democracy they gave their health to protect: Not ok. wtf?

How do these people sleep at night?

[sammytko]

2. They hold voter drives on active duty bases

I was in the Air Force and every squadron had an additional duty slotted for a "voting officer". They made sure anyone who needed to register or send off for absentee ballots had the info.

They sent out info on upcoming state elections etc.

My husband and I are both disabled vets. I wonder if the service organizations provide this benefit (DAV, Order of the Purple Heart, etc). Most of them have offices in each clinic or hospital.

[brooklynite]

3. Hope they don't let Clergy in either...

After all, "you're not being neutral" unless you let every religion come in...

[Barack_America]

4. Bullshit.

Bullshit that voter registration drives are inherently partisan. (and, by the way, :wtf: to that)


Bullshit that registering patients to vote would in any way compromise their medical care. (and I say this as a medical professional who has proudly cared for veterans at VA hospitals)


And no, once you let one group in you do not have to let all groups in. The VA has many social services programs built in. Deputize your own employees to make voter registration a service available to all patients.


I am so figuring out a way to register folks at my local VA after reading this.

[DCKit]

5. Are they afraid that the people they've been shitting on are going to vote (D)?

They should be.