VA Ban on Voter Registration Drives for Injured Vets Becomes National Fight | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet
We certainly don't want people who have seen the horrors of war first hand and are recovering (if that is even possible) from injuries incurred in war to be allowed to cast their vote in an election that might mean the end of the war(s).
The Fascist States of America are top down bastards. Us little piss ants at the bottom of the food chain shouldn't have any say in our life (or death) anyway. We don't have the wisdom and foresight to make intelligent decisions on such matters.
I'm getting whiplash from shaking my head over this crap!
In a letter this week to Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, who earlier this month was barred from registering voters at a VA facility and has since been organizing top state election officials, Secretary of Veterans Affairs James B. Peake said his agency would not allow registration drives unless "these efforts be coordinated through the VA Voluntary Service (VAVS) office at each VA medical center."
"This policy is the result of careful deliberation and consideration for the needs and rights of our patients, concerns about disrupting facility operations, and the need to ensure VA is not involved in partisan political activities," Peake wrote in his July 15, 2008, letter.
Voter registration advocates said the VA policy will not help injured veterans to vote.
"It's official. State officials cannot help veterans vote," said Scott Rafferty, a Washington, D.C., attorney who has been fighting the VA in court to allow voter registration drives at its Menlo Park campus in northern California. "No one, except fingerprinted volunteers, can tell them anything about elections -- and only if they ask."
"No VA staff can help. That's been made clear, too," he said. "It's unbelievable."
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, criticized the latest VA policy.
"VA just threw up their hands and surrendered the voting rights for possibly hundreds of thousands of our veterans," he said. "VA’s weak and indefensible position is all the more striking, shocking, and shameful due the fact some of our veterans now in VA facilities are recovering from battle wounds from Iraq and Afghanistan."
We certainly don't want people who have seen the horrors of war first hand and are recovering (if that is even possible) from injuries incurred in war to be allowed to cast their vote in an election that might mean the end of the war(s).
The Fascist States of America are top down bastards. Us little piss ants at the bottom of the food chain shouldn't have any say in our life (or death) anyway. We don't have the wisdom and foresight to make intelligent decisions on such matters.
I'm getting whiplash from shaking my head over this crap!
