The Pittsburgh Press (August 9, 1943)
Background of news –
Voting in 1944
By Harold Kellock, editorial research reports
The presidential election of 1944 promises to be held under conditions without precedent in American history.
Upwards of 9 million citizens of voting age will be scattered over the earth, among the 11,300,000 American men and women who will then be serving in the Armed Forces. Another 7 million or more will have migrated from their home districts to work at war industry centers. The total number affected by this scrambling of the American population – 16 million potential voters – is equal to nearly one-fourth of the total vote cast in the Roosevelt-Willkie election of 1940.
Under these circumstances, the job of “getting out the vote” will present intricate and difficult problems. Even if the war should have come to an end before November 1944 in the Pacific as well as in Europe, a large part of the electorate would still be in a state of unsettlement.
Immediately after Congress gets back to Washington in September, it will take up the problem of getting ballots to the men and women of the Armed Forces.
Voting proposals outlined
Plans under consideration provide two procedures:
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In the case of men and women at home stations, the War and Navy Departments are to provide postcard applications to vote, to be distributed by commanding officers three weeks before the first primary. These are returnable to the Secretary of State of the voter’s home state, who is to have special war ballots printed and forwarded to the applicants.
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In the case of voters overseas, the postcards are to be omitted. War ballots are to be shipped by V-mail to commanding officers immediately after the last primary elections in the states, and a field election day will be held in each outfit within a week after the ballots are received. Ballots must be returned at once to each state, for transmission to appropriate local election boards.
The procedure is necessarily involved; the sorting job alone to identify the residences of 9 million scattered voters – getting them the proper ballots and shuttling these back to appropriate local election boards – will be an enormous labor. In New York State, for example, the ballots will have to be distributed among 9,327 election districts.
Late voting a handicap
Late primary elections in some of the states may also prove a handicap. Presidential primaries are held through the spring (the first thus far scheduled is for March 14, in New Hampshire), and the candidates will be nominated in the national conventions by early July. Congressional and state ticket nominations, however, are strung along through the summer and 14 states commonly make such nominations in September. Some states are planning to schedule their primaries earlier next year.
The great migrations to war industry centers raise another uncertain factor in polling the vote next year. Up to March 1, 1943, according to studies based on registrations for War Ration Book No. 2, while the country showed a decline of 3,100,000 in civilian population since the census of 1940, 84 war manufacturing areas increased their civilian population by 4,400,000, in spite of losing some 3 million civilians to the Armed Forces.
The total, less the 900,000 natural increase of population, gives a net migration of about 6,500,000 to these centers. This migration has now passed its peak, but changes in residence between elections add to the formalities for qualifying as a voter, and these are likely to reduce the vote cast in 1944 among the millions of persons involved in the war migrations.