Roosevelt’s blunt demand for soldier vote irks GOP
President spoke to people over head of Congress; majority support for bill probable
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
President Roosevelt’s blunt message to Congress demanding passage of the Green-Lucas-Worley soldier-vote bill was a shock that reacted in many questions.
The first-blush reaction in some quarters was that it might hurt rather than help the bill for a federal ballot because of the President’s plain language, particularly the brand of “fraud” which he stamped on the Eastland-Rankin “states’-rights” bill supported by a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats.
But the second thought was that the President’s intercession probably would help in the long run, since he was talking over the heads of Congress to the people, and the public reaction might be potent.
The message made Republicans so mad that they exploded in a direction which some of them, on cooling off, thought might have been poor strategy.
Senators Taft (R-OH) and Bridges (R-NH) broke out immediately with charges that the President was using the federal-ballot bill to help win a fourth term.
Hitherto Republicans have been trying to keep the argument on the high ground of constitutionality. Some of them have confessed privately a fear that the Democrats would get more of the soldier vote than the Democrats.
Southern Democrats, privately resentful, kept their mouths closed, for the President, by bearing down on the Republicans, had made the bill a party issue.
He exposed the plan of Republicans to avoid a record vote in the House on the Worley Bill – a plan which a group of Democrats headed by Rep. Anderson (D-NM) are trying to circumvent. Some Southern Democrats have joined in this attempt to put everybody in the House on record.
Democratic leaders, seeking to reap the full benefit of the President’s message, postponed House consideration of the Rankin Bill until Tuesday.
Senate Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) said he was ready to put the issue to a test in the Senate at any time and hoped to get a vote before the weekend. “It looks pretty good,” he said.
A partial poll of those who voted against the administration last time indicated that the new Lucas-Green Bill has won over enough Southern Democrats to reverse the outcome.
Most of them are basing their shift in a section of the new Lucas-Green bill which stipulates that validity of absentee ballots shall be determined by state and local officials. Thus, the responsibility for throwing out a soldier’s ballot because he had not registered, paid a poll tax or voted on the regular form of state ballot would not rest with the federal government.