10 September 2008
At last the VA is giving up it’s ban on voter registration for veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers. I really couldn’t understand why the ban was in place. They claimed that it would be disruptive but all it did was deny vets the ability to take part in the political process. This election is important because the handling of the Iraq war and treatment of veterans will be major campaign issues. The secretary of veterans affairs said “We’ve now established a uniform approach to helping those of our patients who need assistance to register and to vote.†About time!
As soldiers return wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 100,000 people reside for a month or longer at V.A. facilities nationally. The most important step is to put the new policy in place before the November election and make sure that steps are also taken to sign up the veterans at these facilities. The new policy also requires that information about the right of V.A. patients to register and vote be posted in every veterans hospital, and that all patients be provided a copy of these rights when they are admitted to a veterans facility.
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