Aug 20, VCS Action Alert: Call Congress Today and Restore Our Veteran Voting Rights

VCS Action Alert: Let Our Hospitalized and Homeless Veterans Vote !

Veterans for Common Sense asks you to take action today and call your U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative and ask them to restore our veterans’ voting rights.

In an official policy memo distributed this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) refuses to allow non-partisan voter registration at VA hospitals and nursing homes for our wounded, injured, ill, and disabled veterans. Veterans who move into a VA or who become homeless are required to register with new addresses (if they have one).

VCS believes VA’s anti-veteran policy is wrong. We believe the rules must change immediately so our veterans can register and vote in time for the November 4, 2008 election. The only way to do that is with a new law.

Pick up the phone today and urge your Senators and Representatives to pass S 3308 and HR 6625, the “Veteran Voting Support Act,” and restore our veterans’ voting rights.

Here are some critical facts. In 2004 only one veteran had voted in the last federal election in 2002 out of the 400 that were living at the Menlo Park, California VA campus. The other 399 appear to have been disenfranchised. That’s terrible.

Enacted in the 1990s, the Motor Voter Law was supposed to help citizens register to vote. In early 2008, two U.S. Senators, Diane Feinstein and John Kerry, wrote VA Secretary Peake in a reasonable effort to restore veteran voting rights. VA refused.

Right now, our 13,000 VCS members can make a difference by calling Congress today, especially in their home states during the Summer break and urging them to quickly pass S 3308 and HR 6625, the “Veteran Voting Support Act.” The legislation must pass quickly so that homeless and hospitalized veterans can be registered to vote in time for the November 4, 2008 election.

Veterans for Common Sense also wants you to encourage voter registration among all citizens, including our service members and veterans. You can do this by e-mailing all your friends and family in your address book with a simple reminder. This is a non-partisan and highly patriotic task anyone can do in a few minutes.

Service members overseas also face obstacles to registering and voting. Please spread the word that service members should be requesting their absentee ballots now so they meet voting deadlines for the November 4, 2008 election.

Please honor our fellow Americans who stood between an enemy bullet and our beloved Constitution by registering and voting.

Thank you.

Paul Sullivan
Executive
Director
Veterans for Common Sense

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