The Pittsburgh Press (March 14, 1944)
House expected to okay compromise
Washington (UP) –
The Senate today approved the compromise soldier vote bill 47–31, despite the opposition of Democratic Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY). Twenty-three Democrats joined with 24 Republicans to pass the bill. Twenty-four Democrats, six Republicans and one Progressive opposed it.
The vote came after two days of debate on the controversial measure. House approval of the bill was considered assured. It then would go to President Roosevelt for veto or signature.
Denounced by Barkley
Just before the veto, Mr. Barkley denounced the measure as a restrictive bill which would deny the vote to many servicemen.
Mr. Barkley said the bill would repeal, “not directly but by implication and necessary interpretation.” The waiver in the 1942 law of poll taxes and registration for servicemen voting in federal elections.
He said:
Under this conference report, no serviceman or woman would be allowed to vote unless registered according to the requirements of state law and unless he or she had paid a poll tax if state law requires.
Obligation cited
He added that he thought Congress has an obligation as well as the power to make it easy for members of the Armed Forces to vote for President, Vice President and members of Congress despite the challenges of states’ rights advocates.
Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said that if President Roosevelt vetoes the bill:
He and he alone must assume full responsibility for the disfranchisement of millions of our soldiers, sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen.
The approved bill provides that a federal war ballot will be sent only to servicemen overseas whose state legislatures and governors have certified by July 15 that they will accept the federal ballots for counting. The servicemen would also be required to certify that by Sept. 1 they had applied for a state absentee ballot, but by Oct. 1 had not received it.
To name commission
Servicemen within the country would be required to use state absentee ballots.
A War Ballot Commission composed of the Secretary of War, Secretary of the Navy and War Shipping Administrator would distribute the federal ballots overseas, collect them and send them to the states.
The President “cannot shirk his responsibility,” Mr. Bridges said.
The boys in the foxholes of Italy, in the swamps of the South Pacific, on the ships plowing the seven seas, in planes in the air, will demand an accounting – and get one!
Senator Bridges claimed the pending bill “will enable every member of the Armed Forces, who is otherwise eligible, to cast a ballot in the November elections.” He added:
A barrage of misrepresentation has been leveled at opponents of the federal ballot.
Fourth term fear
Administration supporters such as Chairman Theodore F. Green (D-RI) of the Senate Elections Committee, and Senators Carl A. Hatch (D-NM), Scott Lucas (D-IL) and Joseph f. Guffey (D-PA) shared the belief the new measure would reduce the soldier vote.
Senator Guffey, the Senate’s most outspoken advocate of a fourth term for President Roosevelt, declared that fear of a fourth term and opposition to Negro voting were behind much of the opposition to a simplified federal ballot proposal.
Guffey calls it steal
Senator Guffey said:
Between those who are afraid to let our colored citizens and poor white citizens vote at all, and those who are afraid to let the soldiers vote for fear they will vote for Roosevelt, the Congress, if this bill becomes a law, is perpetrating the greatest organized election steal since 1876, when the Republican Party were the beneficiaries of the presidential election which was stolen from Samuel J. Tilden.
In the 1876 election, Tilden apparently had won, but the electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Oregon were contested. An electoral commission of five Senators, five House members and five Supreme Court justices decided, 8–7, that the electoral votes of these states should go to Rutherford B. Hayes, and Hayes was elected.
Senator Guffey said members of the Armed Forces would be entitled to:
…resent strongly and to combat the policies which may be adopted as a result of this outrageous fraud and deliberate betrayal of democracy.
Another march on Washington
Recalling the 1932 Bonus March on Washington, Senator Guffey predicted that veterans of World War II:
…may come to Washington and demand an accounting from a Congress which refused to allow them to exercise the right to vote and denied them a voice in the selection of federal officers who will adopt the policies which will govern the veterans of this war on their return to civil life.
He said:
This measure is not a service voting bill. It is a bill to disenfranchise 12 million American citizens in the Armed Forces.