Background of news –
Costs of soldier voting
By Burt P. Garnett
In connection with the Soldier Voting Act of 1942, Congress appropriated $1,200,000 to assist the states in meeting the cost of handling the large number of absentee ballots expected from servicemen and women in the Congressional and state elections of that year. The final enactment of the soldier voting bill, however, was held up until September and relatively few votes were cast by servicepeople in the November election.
The President said in his recent message to Congress, in which he urged provision of a federal ballot for the election of 1944, that “out of 5,700,000 men in our Armed Forces at the time of the general election of 1942, only 28,000 servicemen’s votes were counted under the federal statute.” The President’s figure was off about one thousand; records of the War and Navy Departments show that the actual number of servicepeople who voted under the federal law in 1942 was only 27,074.
Total payments to the states out of the $1,200,000 provided by Congress to meet extra expenses under the 1942 Soldier Voting Act came to $71,907.99 – or about $2.65 per service vote. States were reimbursed for printing of special instructions and payment of extra clerical help; they were required to meet the cost of printing extra ballots for servicepeople out of their own funds. Three states – Louisiana, South Dakota and Wisconsin – paid their own expenses in full. Of the $1,200,000 appropriated by Congress, $1,128,092 remained unexpended after all expenses chargeable to the federal government had been met.
State cost to be low
No estimate can yet be made of the cost of polling the very much larger number of servicepeople expected to participate in the presidential election of 1944. The total cost will depend not only upon the number of votes cast by members of the Armed Forces, but also upon the nature of the ballot to be provided under the revised Soldier Voting Act now awaiting final action by Congress. If it turns out to be a federal ballot, as desired by the administration, permitting a vote only for candidates for federal office, the state share of the cost of soldier voting will be negligible.
If a combination scheme using both state and federal ballots is finally adopted (as now seems more likely), the cost will be higher, but still far from prohibitive. Assuming that Congress follows the precedent established in 1942., the direct cost to the states will be confined in the main to the expense of printing extra absentee ballots.
Indirect costs will include the expenses incident to holding special sessions of state legislatures to ensure new soldier voting legislation. Here the chief cost will be payment of mileage to legislators for an extra trip to the state capital. Total direct and indirect costs of soldier voting to the states should not exceed 10% for each man and woman from the state serving in the Armed Forces.
O’Daniel voted down
A proposal advanced by Senator O’Daniel (D-TX) while the tax bill was before the Senate, would have made soldier voting a source of revenue to the eight Southern poll tax states. Senator O’Daniel pointed out that the poll tax as a voting requirement had been written into the Texas Constitution and could not be waived by the legislature. If Congress was going to exempt servicepeople from payment of poll taxes, he said, it should provide for payment of such taxes on their behalf out of the Treasury. He offered an amendment to the tax bill for this purpose, but it was quickly rejected by the Senate.
