Editorial: A demand from the people will get results
Some of the members of Congress either didn’t go home for their Christmas recess, or they didn’t get around much while they were home.
They would be the members of the House Committee on Election of President, Vice President and Representatives in Congress, who have rejected a soldier-vote bill.
The committed has voted, 7–5, to present to the House what the committee chairman, Congressman Eugene Worley (D-TX) calls a “ghost bill.”
It simply authorizes the War and Navy Departments to send a postcard to the members of the Armed Forces suggesting that they write to their home states for ballots on which to vote in this year’s elections.
This is not giving the Armed Forces the right to vote. Like the Senate measure, which merely recommended that the states set up an absentee voting system for the Armed Forces, it sidesteps the issue.
It doesn’t do anything.
Some of the states have made provision for taking a vote among the Armed Forces. Some have not. Some which have enacted such legislation, like Pennsylvania, did so before these was any idea that seven million fighting men might be overseas before the next election.
The Pennsylvania law was not adequate last year. It will be less adequate this year.
But it is not easy for the states to do an effective job of providing for a vote among the Armed Forces.
It is much easier for Congress to do the job. And it is Congress’ duty to do it. The responsibility of Congress to these men is greater even than its responsibility to the home front.
And there is one good way to get Congress to act, poll-tax Congressmen, coalitions, “unholy alliances,” or whatever.
That is for the people to act, to let Congress know how the voters at home feel about it. And the way to do that is to write them letters about it.
Depriving these men of a vote would be an unspeakable betrayal of the trust they left in the home front when they went abroad to fight and die.