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VA still resists voting drives in facilities

The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to resist efforts by lawmakers to allow voter registration groups access to patients at hospitals and nursing homes.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James Peake said VA will provide information to veterans about voter registration but will not open the doors to outside groups for two reasons: VA is not prepared to judge whether an organization is truly nonpartisan, and involving federal workers in a partisan operation would violate federal law.

“The agency is not in a position to examine the agenda, history and motivations of every organization that may wish to conduct voter registration drives in our facilities,” Peake said in a July 15 letter to three Democratic senators, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Dianne Feinstein of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts.

The Veterans Health Administration has a policy, dated May 5, 2008, to assist patients who want to vote or register to vote, but it does not allow voter registration drives in order to avoid involving employees in partisan activities and disrupting medical facilities. Peake said voting and voter educational materials are being made available to patients.

Akaka, chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he is “amazed that VA insists on banning all voter registration drives by outside groups” and thinks VA is reading too much into the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of federal workers.

“If VA really cannot distinguish between nonpartisan and partisan voter registration drives, it should just allow both and advise VA employees not to participate if they are uncertain, since the Hatch Act is implicated only if VA employees participate,” Akaka said.

As it stands, VA policy “makes it unnecessarily difficult” for some veterans to vote, he said.