Votes for Soldiers

U.S. soldiers will vote in 1944.

When an uneasy Senate windily debated the soldier vote last month, both parties were politicking furiously (TiME, Dec. 13). New Dealers stubbornly pushed the Lucas-Green measure, which would have set up a super-powerful Federal War Ballot Commission. On the side, they suspected that servicemen would vote for the Commander in Chief. Republicans stubbornly fought beside conservative Democrats for States' rights.* The anti-New Deal coalition killed the bill and substituted a pious, meaningless resolution which threw the whole problem back at the States. On their side, GOPsters succeeded in delivering a humiliating defeat to the Administration.

A sobered Congress came back to work this week, ready to listen to any reasonable compromise. They had had their say. More important, they had had a good long talk with the folks back home. The soldiers must vote. Three events speeded the new reasonableness:

P:Navy Secretary Frank Knox and War Secretary Henry Stimson wrote a joint letter to the Council of State Governors. Obviously, they said, 48 individual States could not handle the complex job of polling servicemen: "The War & Navy Departments do not advocate or oppose any particular voting legislation. . . . [But] the Services are unable effectively to administer the diverse procedures of 48 States as to 11,000,000 servicemen all over the world in primary, special and general elections."

P:The Algiers edition of Stars & Stripes, the Army's overseas newspaper, polled its readers, found that 100% felt strongly about their right to vote. Forty-two servicemen readers from 42 States were specific about it: "Give us a chance to vote the easy way and not leave us to the individual States with their inadequate laws and delaying difficulties."

P:State legislatures, egged on by an aroused nation to take action--any action --met in haste. Georgia and West Virginia speedily passed soldier vote measures. The legislatures of Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin called special January sessions. Arkansas nervously dusted off a 1923 law abolishing the poll tax for soldiers. New Jersey's Governor Charles Edison stepped forward with a scheme for mailing postcards to servicemen overseas.

Whether the special bills, schemes, promises and bustling in State capitals could solve the problem or not (the Army & Navy plainly thought not), the worrywart frenzy of state activity was a symptom of the nation's temper. In blunt words, voters had told their legislators--both state and national--that something must be done.

Something Will Be Done. Back to Capitol Hill came Illinois's Scott Lucas with a rewritten version of the bill which he stubbornly defended for six days last month. He was now ready to be sweetly reasonable toward the equally stubborn Republicans who had fought his bill. This time, Senator Lucas felt, he had a measure to resolve all objections. His would-be Federal War Ballot Commission need not infringe on States' rights. Acting as a mere administrative office for the Army & Navy, the Commission could send out ballots, collect them, and pass them along to the states for counting.

Republicans did not press forward with endorsements. But most of them seemed as sweetly reasonable as Scott Lucas. Said G.O.P. House Leader Joe Martin, giving soldier vote legislation first place on his Congressional "must" list: "The States will do all they can . . . but there is need for some assistance from the Federal Government." Maine's silver-topped Wallace H. White, G.O.P. Senate spokesman while Oregon's Charlie McNary is ill, was ready to go to "extreme lengths" to get the issue settled quickly. Said he: "It would be a calamity if we ... left eight to ten million soldiers sore, disappointed and resentful against their Government.... If there ever was a time when we should adjust controversies, this is it."

*The Lucas-Green bill was actually an amendment to the original Soldier Voting Law of 1942, an unworkable measure which, by giving all individuals in the Armed Services the right to vote, specifically abolished poll-tax restrictions.

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