VA's Voter Registration Policy Could Block Thousands of Veterans from Voting in 2008

In response to

the Department of Veterans Affairs' decision to modify its policy
barring voter registration activity in VA facilities, today the American

Association of People with Disabilities, the Brennan Center for Justice,

Common Cause, Demos and the League of Women Voters submitted

a letter to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein calling the
VA's directive an important but still inadequate step towards
protecting the voting rights of veterans.

The two-page letter declares
that the VA's policy will still greatly hinder veterans attempting

to register and vote in the 2008 election and that swift passage of the
Veterans Voting Support Act (S. 3308) is necessary ensure that the
nation's 25 million veterans are able to vote this
November.

"The Department of
Veterans Affairs' latest directive, which modifies its misguided
policy barring voter registration activities in VA facilities, still
does not solve the fundamental problem," said Wendy Weiser,
Director of Voting Rights and Elections at the
Brennan Center for
Justice.

"Only the prompt passage
of the Veterans Voting Support Act will make sure that the millions of
men and women served by the VA have a fair opportunity to register and
vote this fall," stated Mary G. Wilson, president of the League of

Women Voters.

The letter lists four reasons
why the VA's recent directive will not be sufficient to protect
the voting rights of veterans served by the VA:

• First, the directive
  imposes no affirmative obligation on VA facilities and agencies to
  register veterans. The directive requires only that each VA facility
  must adopt "a written published policy on voter assistance"
  and that information on registering and voting must be posted throughout

  VA facilities; it does not obligate VA facilities to actively register
  voters. S. 3308 would remedy this deficiency

  by authorizing VA facilities to be designated as voter registration
  agencies under the National Voter Registration Act, or "motor
  voter" law.

• Second, the VA's
  directive makes voter registration services available only to patients
  residing in VA facilities, and not to veterans availing themselves of VA

  services on an out-patient basis or otherwise obtaining services from
  the VA. All veterans served by VA facilities

  should be permitted to avail themselves of voter registration services
  on the same basis as in-patients.

• Third, under the
  VA's directive it is unclear whether and to what extent outside
  groups - which are responsible for millions of voter registrations

  every election - will actually be permitted to conduct voter
  registration activities. The directive
  provides that "[a]ny request by an outside organization to
  facilitate voter registration on VA property is [to be] forwarded to
  local Regional Counsel for review." And, although the directive calls on facility directors to
  establish "[c]riteria for evaluating the time, place, and manner
  of voter registration and voter assistance activities," the
  absence of any substantive guidelines creates a risk that voter
  registration by state and local election officials and non-partisan
  voter registration groups may be severely undermined by the requirement
  that registration efforts must be "coordinated with the
  facility."

• Finally, the VA's
  directive will not guarantee prompt services so veterans are able to
  register and vote this November. The
  directive imposes no proactive duties on the VA; it only suggests the VA

  will not unduly interfere with others' efforts to register
  veterans. And because the directive
  evidently vests each facility director with discretion (a) to determine
  whether groups attempting to register veterans are appropriately
  "non-partisan"; and (b) to dictate the time, place and
  manner of voter registration activities, the directive does not go
  sufficiently far to ensure that veterans will receive any meaningful
  assistance in this election cycle.

In addition to passing S.

3308, the authors of the letter emphasized the need for immediate
hearings so that VA officials might respond to the concerns
above. "We look forward to the Senate
conducting immediate hearings on the VA's new policy, so that
representatives of the VA may give on-the-record testimony regarding the

concerns we have raised," said Lisa Danetz, Senior Counsel at
Demos.

"We thank Senators
Feinstein and Kerry for their great leadership and commitment to
protecting veterans' voting rights, and we credit them in
significant part for the VA's retraction of a policy that makes it

unnecessarily difficult for veterans to vote. However, the VA's modified policy will not provide
adequate voter registration services at VA facilities that thousands of
men and women rely on," according to Jim Dickson, public affairs
director for the American Association of Persons with
Disabilities.

A

full copy of the letter is available here.