1944: First Issue

The 1944 Presidential campaign battle began bitterly in Congress last week. In a truculent message, President Roosevelt accused the Senate of attempting to perpetrate a "fraud on the soldiers and sailors and marines" and "on the American people."

The President's message applied to the Soldiers' Voting bill passed by the Senate last December, and approved by the House Elections Committee last fortnight. Under this bill, which leaves the whole matter of soldier voting to the states, the President charged that "the vast majority" of the 11,000,000 men & women in the armed services would be deprived of the vote in 1944. Analyzing the states' cumbersome absentee-voting methods, he pointed out that only 17 states have scheduled legislative sessions to simplify these procedures. The solution, said the President, is a federal ballot, as provided in the bills sponsored in the Senate by Illinois' Scott Lucas and Rhode Island's Theodore Green, and in the House by Texas' handsome young (29) Eugene Worley, a Navy lieutenant commander who has seen service in the South Pacific.

"Interested Citizen." The Senate heard the President's message out in silence. To most of them this kind of attack was familiar. House Republicans booed the charge of fraud. The President took a deep dig at House procedure. A plan had been laid to bring up the Worley bill under a rule which would let it be shouted down by voice vote, with no recording of yeas & nays. President Roosevelt suggested that every Congressman should be willing to "stand up and be counted" on this vital issue. He said he felt he was within his rights in suggesting this, "as an interested citizen." At this the House seethed with mocking laughter.

In the Senate, two days before, Ohio's Republican Robert Taft had charged that Secretaries Stimson and Knox, in arguing for the federal ballot, had shown that they "are today running for a fourth term" because they regard themselves as indispensable to the conduct of the war. But after the Roosevelt message, balding, humorless Bob Taft, ordinarily dry and legal in manner, leaped up with red face and flailing arms. He called the President's message a "direct insult" to Congress, and charged that the President is planning to line up soldiers for the Fourth Term "as the WPA workers were marched to the polls."

Oregon's Rufus C. Holman proceeded to make the blurt-of-the-week: "It seems to me that the difficulty centers around the fact that the Commander in Chief of the Army is himself a candidate for the Presidency. If he would eliminate himself from that advantageous or unfair position, I think debate on the pending bill would cease."

Democrat Abe Murdock of Utah thrust like a shark at this vulnerable opening. "I know it is the prayer in his heart, and it is the prayer in the heart of every other good, old, stand-pat Republican in the United States today . . . that Franklin D. Roosevelt would eliminate himself from politics and give them at least a shadow of a chance to bring in the Grand Old Party again. But I say to them . . . the American people still want Roosevelt."

(At this the cheers and jeers in the crowded Senate galleries became so tumultuous that the austere Congressional Record took solemn note: "Manifestations of approval and disapproval in the galleries.")

Blank Ballots. The question of how the armed services shall vote had unquestionably become the first issue of the 1944 Presidential campaign. President Roosevelt's message was not designed to persuade Congress but to put it on a spot. He clearly succeeded. Just as clearly, the opposition by Republicans and anti-Roosevelt Democrats to a federal ballot was partly motivated by fear that it will make Fourth Term votes for 16 years of Roosevelt. But there was a lot more to the argument than appeared in Franklin Roosevelt's belligerent message.

Part of the Republican objection to a federal ballot was based on the procedure proposed in the Lucas-Green-Worley bills. Blank ballots with spaces for President, Vice President, Senator and Representative would be shipped abroad in bulk, distributed to every service man and woman of voting age. Candidates' names would be forwarded to all posts and voters would write in the names of their choices. If the names fail to reach them, they could simply write in the party of their choice for each office.

Republicans point out Mr. Roosevelt's advantage as Commander in Chief, with clear access to the troops throughout the campaign. He also has the inestimable political advantage of a well-known name. He is the only President that many a fighting man has ever known. Republicans believe that on a short, blank ballot, the soldier will yield to a normal human tendency to write the known name as against the unknown. They further fear that the soldier voter may pick his Congressional choices by hazard or simply go down the line for the Commander in Chief's party. A regular state ballot from the service man's home district, Republicans argue, would give full information, and more opportunity for discrimination.

Tell It to the Marines. But a basic objection to federal balloting is the fact that the Constitution gives the states exclusive power to determine voting methods and voting qualifications for all offices. (A National Opinion Research Center Poll recently indicated that 67% of the American people are ignorant of this--as they are of most of the Constitution.) Congress' war powers do not authorize it to supersede the Constitution. Such Southern poll-taxers as Mississippi's rabble-rousing, poodle-haired Representative John Rankin make no bones of the fact that he is fighting a Federal ballot in order to maintain "white supremacy" and his own political power by limiting the franchise to a fraction of the electorate.

Democrat Lucas brushed aside such constitutional arguments last week, declaring: "Senators may talk about the Constitution if they wish. They may wrap themselves in the folds of that old document. . . . My answer to that is, 'Tell that to the Marine at Tarawa.' " Senator Lucas had amended his bill to leave acceptance or rejection of ballots entirely to the states. But the Illinois Senator had not banished the grave possibility that many federal ballots might be challenged or rejected under state laws. Mississippi's Rankin last week blustered that any election official who counted a ballot which did not conform to state laws would be "liable to prosecution in state courts." This was no idle threat.

Army & Navy officials have testified that shortage of transportation and hazards of war and weather make it impossible for them to guarantee expeditious delivery and return of bulky state ballots. Senator Taft argued that state ballots can readily be lightened, that several million service men & women will still be in the U.S. in October, that perhaps 2,000,000 of those overseas will be under voting age. The Army has already delivered over a billion pieces of mail overseas. Bob Taft could not see why it cannot deliver a few million more.

As the week ended, only one fact in all the confused debate seemed certain: somehow, the soldiers are going to get a chance to vote.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.