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The Service Vote in the Elections of 1944

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Boyd A. Martin
Boyd A. Martin
Affiliation:
University of Idaho
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Extract

One of the most controversial legislative matters considered by the Seventy-eighth Congress was the question of whether or not Congress should simplify voting procedures for service men and women. The popular feeling of the nation strongly favored giving the armed forces every opportunity to vote, not inconsistent with the necessities of war. The controversy in Congress was not restricted entirely to the constitutional question of whether or not Congress had the legal power to provide soldiers with a federal ballot by which they could vote for president, vice-president, representatives, and senators, but in addition, it raised social and political questions of great magnitude. The political significance of the service vote became increasingly apparent when the Gallup Poll announced on December 4, 1943, that the soldier vote, which favored President Franklin D. Roosevelt by 61 per cent, could break the apparent even division of the electorate between the two parties and assure Roosevelt of reëlection. The social significance of liberal federal legislation on the issue was obvious, since numerous states have suffrage laws to prevent the practice of universal suffrage.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , August 1945 , pp. 720 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1945

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References

1 New York Times, Dec. 5, 1943.

2 New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, California, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. See Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1939), Vol. III, p. 280.Google Scholar

3 New Jersey, Delaware, and Indiana. In 1860, twenty-one of the thirty-four states in the Union excluded soldiers stationed in the state for military purposes from voting by not permitting them to gain residence while stationed in the state. Porter, Kirk H., A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, 1918), p. 148.Google Scholar

4 Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio.

5 Carl Sandburg, op. cit., p. 280.

6 Statement made by SenatorLucas, Scott W., Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, United States Senate, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., on S. 1285, Voting In Time of War by Members of the Land and Naval Forces (Washington, 1943), 44.Google Scholar

7 Carl Sandburg, op. cit., pp. 281–282.

8 These election data have been computed from information in Cousens, Theodore W., Politics and Political Organizations in America (New York, 1942), p. 173Google Scholar; Carl Sandburg, op. cit., p. 568; Sandburg, Carl, Storm Over the Land (New York, 1942), p. 316Google Scholar; Norton, Lee, War Elections, 1862–1864 (New York), p. 45Google Scholar; and CongressmenRogers, John Jacob, Cong. Rec., Vol. 56, 66th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1918), 6166.Google Scholar

Senator Scott W. Lucas states that the soldier vote in 1864 affected one state election, i.e., in Maryland. The soldiers were responsible for the adoption of the Maryland constitution by a majority of 475, which came wholly from the soldier vote in the field. A few minor offices such as probate judges and prosecuting attorneys were determined by the service vote, which was responsible also for the election of one congressman in Michigan. See remarks of SenatorLucas, Scott W., Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, United States Senate, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., on S. 1285, Voting in Time of War by Members of the Land and Naval Forces (Washington, 1943), 45.Google Scholar

9 H.R. 12741, Cong. Rec., 65th Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. 56, Part 9 (1918), 9288.

10 H.R. 10712, Cong. Rec., 65th Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. 56 (1918), index to Record, p. 96.

11 Cong. Rec., 65th Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. 56, Part 7 (1918), 6792; New York Times, May 19, 1918.

12 Cong. Rec., 65th Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. 56, Part 6 (1918), 5886.

13 Cong. Rec., 65th Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. 56, Part 6 (1918), 5952–5953 and 6166.

14 New York Times, Sept. 24, 29, 30, 1918, and Oct. 1, 1918. There has been considerable speculation over how the soldiers on foreign soil would have voted had they been permitted to vote. Those who accepted the results of the New York gubernatorial election as indicative of the political attitude of soldiers claimed that Congress would have gone Democratic had all the eligible soldiers been allowed to vote. In New York, where the soldier vote was counted separately, the soldiers gave Alfred E. Smith 16,674 votes to 9,297 for Governor Charles S. Whitman. See New York Times, Dec. 18, 1918, and Jan. 5, 1919, for election data. According to Congressman John Jacob Rogers of Massachusetts in 1918, 80 per cent of the Canadian troops located in Canada voted for the Government, while 92.80 per cent of those in France voted for the Government; and 95 per cent of the Canadian troops in Great Britain voted for the Government. Cong. Rec., Vol. 56, 66th Cong., 2nd Sess., (1918), 6166–6170.

15 Absent-voters' laws were not new. They had been used in both the Civil War and in the Spanish-American War for soldiers and sailors. In 1896, Vermont extended the privilege to civilians. The movement was taken up by Western progressives, with Kansas leading the way in 1901. By 1942, forty-five states had absent-voters' laws of some kind. See series of articles on this subject by Professor P. Orman Ray, in this Review, Vol. VIII (1914), pp. 442–445, XII (1918), pp. 251–261, and XVII (1924), pp. 321–325. In the same periodical, see Charles Kettleborough, “Absent Voting,” XI (1917), pp. 320–322. See also Donaldson, William T. and Roseberry, L. H., “Absent Voting,” National Municipal Review, III (1914), pp. 733–737CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sait, Edward McChesney, American Parties and Elections (3rd ed., New York, 1942), p. 704.Google Scholar

16 Delaware, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Utah.

17 Connecticut, Maine, and Nebraska.

18 Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington (to only those twenty miles distant from their precinct), and Wisconsin.

19 Massachusetts.

20 Wyoming.

21 Tennessee.

22 Computed from Absent Voting, 64th Cong., 2nd Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 659.

23 In thirteen states, there was no legal provision to keep soldiers from other states from voting if they fulfilled the residence requirements of the state. However, very few were located long enough in a state to meet the residence requirement. See article by Boyd, Mary Sumner, “Suffrage for Soldiers,” The Woman Citizen, Vol. I, pp. 314–315 (Sept. 22, 1917).Google Scholar

24 See Logan, Thomas F., “Soldier Vote In War,” American Economist, Vol. 62, pp. 122–123 (Sept. 6, 1918).Google Scholar

25 United States News, Feb. 11, 1944.

26 The author is indebted to the Office of War Information, State Absentee Voting and Registration Laws (Washington, D. C.), Sept., 1942, pp. 2–12Google Scholar, for these data on state absent-voting provisions.

27 United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 56, p. 753.

28 For a good brief summary of Public Law 712 of the 77th Congress, see Soldier-Sailor Voting (Chicago, Council of State Governments, Dec., 1944), pp. 5–6.

29 Bureau of the Census, Elections, 1942, No. 3, “The Soldier Vote in 1942” (Aug. 1943).Google Scholar

30 New York Times, Oct. 25, 1942.

31 Message from the President of the United States, “Absent Voting in Time of War by Members of the Armed Forces,” 78th Cong., 2nd Sess., House of Representatives, Doc. No. 386. During October and November, 1943, the House Committee on Election of President, Vice President, and Representatives in Congress held hearings on six bills introduced to amend Public Law 712: H.R. 3436, H.R. 3876, S. 1285, H.J. Res. 190, H.R. 3210, and H.R. 3361. During October and November, 1943, and January, 1944, the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections held hearings on three bills for the same purpose: S. 1285, S. 1612, and S. 1614.

32 For a copy of the bill, see Hearings Before Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., on S. 1285 (Washington, 1943).

33 In 1875 (Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wallace 162), the Court held that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not add suffrage to the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Rather, it protects citizens of the United States against the impairment by the states of the privileges and immunities they enjoyed before the passage of the Amendment. Twenty-five years later, in Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U. S. 581 (1900), the Court reaffirmed its interpretation when it held: “The right of suffrage and the right to hold an office under authority of the State, unlike the right of a citizen to engage in a gainful occupation, is not considered, as a general rule, a privilege or immunity belonging to a citizen of the United States, nor an inherent or natural right existing in the absence of a constitutional provision or legislative enactment. It is rather considered as a political privilege or civil right under the control of the state, which it may regulate or restrict, so long as the right of suffrage is not denied to any person on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

In Ex Parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884), the Court stated that Art. I, Sec. 2 of the Constitution does not determine qualifications; instead, it clearly provides that state electors permitted to vote for members of the most numerous branch of the state legislature may vote for members of the House of Representatives. However, the electors owe their right to vote for members of Congress to the Constitution and not to state law, held the Court. In interpreting the Fifteenth Amendment (Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347), the Court stated that the Amendment gave no right of suffrage. It did not take away from the states the power over suffrage which they had before its passage; it merely restricted either the United States or the states from denying the privileges of voting on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

In Smith v. Allwright, 88 L. Ed., advance opinion 701 (1944), the Court reaffirmed its former ruling that the states control suffrage qualifications subject to prohibitions of the Constitution. In holding the Texas white primary illegal, the Court said: “A state is free to conduct its elections and limit its electorate as it may deem wise, save only as its action may be affected by prohibitions of the Federal Constitution or in conflict with powers delegated to or exercised by the national government.” In United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 (1944), the Court again upheld this view when it stated: “The right of the people to choose Representatives in Congress is aright established and guaranteed by Art. 1, Sec. 2, of the Constitution and hence is one secured by it to those citizens and inhabitants of the State who are entitled to exercise the right.”

The entire issue of the Congressional Digest, June–July, 1944, is devoted to the national election, with considerable emphasis on federal vs. states' rights and the soldier-vote issue. For an article holding that the poll tax is a tax and not a qualification, see “H.R. 7 to Outlaw the Poll Tax in Federal Elections is Constitutional,” Lawyers' Guild Review, Vol. 3, pp. 9–15.

34 Op. cit.

35 Cong. Rec., Jan. 13, 1944, A. 158.

36 For details of the debates and votes, see Cong. Rec., 78th Cong., 2nd Sess., (1944), Feb. 3–Mar. 15. See also two articles by Trussell, C. P. in New York Times, Jan. 23 and Mar. 19, 1944Google Scholar; also, in the same paper, an article by Luther Huston, Feb. 6, 1944.

37 Report of the United States War Ballot Commission, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. No. 6.

38 California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.

39 All data concerning the federal war ballots are either taken directly or are computed from data appearing in reports of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Administrator of War Shipping Administration, and the United States War Ballot Commission. All of these reports appear in the report of the United States War Ballot Commission, op. cit.

40 Ibid., computed from figures appearing on pp. 43, 77, 80, and 81.

41 See article by Leo Egan, New York Times, Dec. 10, 1944. According to the Times survey, a total of 3,094,042 service ballots were received in thirty states. In 1940, these thirty had approximately 70 per cent of the population of the country. If the same ratio of service votes to population prevailed in the other eighteen states, the total service vote for the country was close to 4,400,000. The Times survey indicates that in the Northeastern industrial states the number of service ballots received averaged approximately 30 to 40 per cent of the estimated number in the service from each state. In Arkansas, the service vote was 5 per cent of the total vote; it was 6 per cent in Pennsylvania and about 7 per cent in New York.

Only seven states, according to the Times survey, made a separate canvass of civilian and military votes. In these (Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island), President Roosevelt received 59.3 per cent of the military vote, as compared to 51.5 per cent of the civilian vote in the same states. The service vote carried New Jersey for the President. In the above seven states, Roosevelt got 3,878,165 civilian votes to Governor Dewey's 3,666,244, and 321,433 services votes to Dewey's 221,429.

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