VA allows voter registration drives

[unhappycamper]

VA allows voter registration drives
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Sep 13, 2008 6:41:41 EDT

In a politically tinged reversal of early restrictions, the Veterans Affairs Department has decided to open its doors to nonpartisan voter registration drives.

The decision, announced Sept. 8, came just days before VA officials were expected to face a grilling by the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees voting laws, over what VA finds so wrong about helping veterans exercise their right to vote.

Under the new policy, which VA officials call a clarification of previous rules, voter registration efforts run by nonpartisan groups or state or local election officials will be allowed at hospitals, nursing homes and clinics as long as they are coordinated with facility managers to avoid disrupting patient care.

The new policy requires VA hospitals to post information about registering to vote and casting ballots and to have a written policy on helping patients exercise those rights. Also, every hospital has a policy to allow patients to leave the facility to vote, and to help them vote by absentee ballot.

VA officials had balked at giving even nonpartisan groups, such as the League of Women Voters, access to VA facilities because of concerns it would disrupt other work and might inadvertently lead VA workers to run afoul of rules barring their involvement in politics if they allowed a group in that ended up being partisan.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/09/airforce_vavoting_091308/%2e