The Pittsburgh Press (January 26, 1944)
Special message demands Congressmen stand up, be counted
Washington –
President Roosevelt today assailed as a “fraud” on service personnel the so-called states’ rights soldier-vote legislation. He called upon Congress to provide a single federal ballot, which he said would enable all members of the Armed Forces to vote for federal officials this November.
In a special message to Congress, the President specifically endorsed a compromise bill now pending in the Senate which would provide for distribution of federal ballots to servicemen and women, with states retaining the right to determine whether the voters are qualified and whether their votes are valid.
Wants a record vote
Mr. Roosevelt also noted that Congress might act on the matter without a record vote.
That, he said, is entirely a legislative matter, but he added that:
I think that most Americans will agree with me that every member of the two Houses of Congress ought to be willing in justice “to stand up and be counted”!
The bill passed by the Senate on Dec. 3, Mr. Roosevelt said, was a “fraud on the soldiers and sailors and Marines now training and fighting.”
Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) arose immediately after the President’s message was read in the Senate to protest against what he termed the Chief Executive’s “insult.”
Senator Taft objects
Senator Taft said:
It is most unfortunate that the President should again see fit to inject himself into legislative matters. It is an insult to the members of Congress.
The existing soldier-vote law enacted in 1942 would permit soldiers to vote, Senator Taft said, and the Senate-approved bill pending in the House would enable soldiers to vote.
He introduced a substitute bill which would retain state ballots but set up federal machinery for their distribution and collection, and promised that he would later discuss the President’s message on the grounds that Mr. Roosevelt’s arguments were “untrue and unsound.”
Mr. Roosevelt in his message said the bill passed by the Senate was a fraud upon the people as well as on service personnel.
He continued:
It would not enable any soldier to vote with any greater facility than was provided by Public Law 712 under which only a negligible number of soldier’s votes were cast.
The bill condemned by Mr. Roosevelt called upon the states to enact legislation to facilitate absentee balloting by members of the Armed Forces.
On House calendar
It was adopted by the Senate in place of a bill which had been approved by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee and which would have provided for voting by members of the Armed Forces on federal ballots under direction of a War Ballot Commission.
The bill is now on the House calendar, after being slightly revised by the House Elections Committee.
The Senate, meanwhile, is considering the soldier vote issue anew. Pending on the floor is a compromise bill sponsored by Senators Scott Lucas (D-IL) and Theodore F. Green (D-RI), which would provide for distribution of federal ballots on which service personnel would write in the name of their choices for President, Vice President, Senator and Representative.
Lucas bill favored
Mr. Roosevelt endorsed the pending Lucas-Green Senate bill – which has been introduced in the House by Elections Committee Chairman Eugene Worley (D-TX) – because, he said, it “seems to me” that it would furnish to service personnel an opportunity to vote.
The new Lucas-Green and Worley bills set up proper and efficient machinery for absentee balloting, Mr. Roosevelt said.
Each state, under the bills, would determine for itself whether or not the voter is qualified to vote under the laws of his state.
The President said:
There is nothing in such a proposed statute which violates the rights of the states. The federal government merely provides quick machinery for getting the ballots to the troops and back again.
He said that he spoke as the Commander-in-Chief of the men in the armed services and that:
I am sure that I can express their wishes in this matter and their resentment against the discrimination which is being practiced against them.
The nation’s fighting men, Mr. Roosevelt asserted, do not have a lobby or pressure group on Capitol Hill “to see that justice is done for them.”
Can’t use ads
He added:
They are not ordinarily permitted to write their Congressman on pending legislation, nor do they put ads in the papers or stimulate editorial writers or columnists to make special appeals for them.
It certainly would appear unnecessary that our soldiers and sailors and Merchant Marine have to make a special effort to retain their right to vote.
The President said that he has been informed that it would be possible, under Congressional parliamentary rules, for a soldier’s vote bill to be rejected or passed without a roll call. He said he had hesitated to say anything to the Congress on this matter because the making of these rules is closely within the discretion of the two Houses.
But he added:
I think that there would be widespread resentment on the part of the people of the nation if they were unable to find out how their individual representatives had expressed themselves on this legislation – which goes to the root of citizenship.
The President said there will be more than five million Americans outside the United States in our Armed Forces and Merchant Marine when the 194 elections are held. He noted that they, and millions more who will be stationed within the country awaiting shipment overseas, will be subject to frequent, rapid and unpredictable transfer to other points outside the inside the United States.
‘Tongues in cheek’
The President said:
Some people – I am sure with their tongues in their cheeks – say that the solution to this problem is simply that the respective states improve their own absentee ballot machinery.
In fact, there is now pending before the House of Representatives a meaningless bill, passed by the Senate Dec. 3, 1943, which presumes to meet this complicated and difficult situation by some futile language which recommends to the several states the immediate enactment of appropriate legislation…
This recommendation is itself a proof of the unworkability of existing state laws. I consider such proposed legislation a fraud on the soldiers and sailors and Marines now training and fighting for us and for our sacred rights.
The recommendation in that bill, Mr. Roosevelt said, may be heeded by a few states but will not and cannot be carried out by all the states.
The President said that he was convinced that if all the states tried to carry out the recommendations contained in the bill passed by the Senate, the most practical method would be to authorize the Army and Navy to distribute and collect ballots prepared by the states in response to post card requests from servicemen.
But this very procedure, he added, is set forth in Public Law 712 which he said “has been such a failure.”
The law to which he referred was enacted in 1942 to facilitate absentee voting by servicemen, but even opponents of federal balloting legislation have conceded that it was adequate.
