Editorial: Where is the plot?
Congressman Rankin of Mississippi, who is the most talkative of the anti-soldier-vote bloc in Congress, says any form of simple, uniform ballot which may be devised for the Army and Navy would be “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the members of our Armed Forces.”
He also claims it “might mark the beginning of the end of constitutional government in America.”
He says:
I realize that is what the Communist Party and its sympathizers want. They want to wipe out the states and set up a system of Sovietized regions.
Mr. Rankin often is tiresome, but seldom even he gets quite so hysterical.
There is no “fraud” in giving the members of the Armed Forces the right and opportunity to vote – providing the system which is adopted is honest and as efficient as circumstances will permit.
By no stretch of the imagination can a simple, uniform ballot, merely because it is set up by Congress, the constitutional representatives of the people, be construed as a threat to constitutional government. On the contrary. What is more constitutional than the right to vote?
As for the attitude of the Communist Party, it is not of consequence in this issue – or any other issue. Establishment of an emergency plan which will enable the Armed Forces to vote while they are overseas fighting a war does not in any manner smack of communism or anything faintly resembling it.
It will not wipe out the states or in any respect interfere with their normal functions. The ballots will be counted, along with the ballots cast by civilians at home, in the home districts of the men and women in the Armed Forces.
The only reason for proposing a simple, uniform ballot, to be provided by Congress, is that it is impossible for the Armed Forces to vote in any strength under existing state laws and it would be impossible for all 48 states to enact, in unison, such a ballot.
If there is any merit in Mr. Rankin’s opposition to legislation which will enable soldiers and sailors to vote, he is not developing it by resorting to such hysterical scare statements.
Mr. Rankin is either seeing something under the bed, or he is hiding something there.
There is no plot nor conspiracy in making it possible for the free citizens of the United States to exercise a right given them by the Constitution.