VA refuses request to change vote policy

Veterans Secretary James Peake formally responded to a request by three prominent Democratic senators to reverse his policy disallowing voter registration drives on Department of Veterans Affairs property.

He refused.

Peake said that part of the problem is the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan political activity by federal employees. The VA only wants to bar partisan groups from registration drives. But Peake said even the determination of which groups are partisan and which are not would amount to a violation of the act.

So the simpliest solution, he said, is to bar all groups, partisan or not. "Moreover, the agency is not in the position to examine the agenda, history and motivations of every organization that may wish to conduct voter registration drives in our facility," Peake said in a letter to the Democrats.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have asked Peake to end the prohibition.

Akaka said in a statement today that Peake is misreading the law, saying he was "amazed" that the VA is barring voter drives.

"If his contention were true, any federal employee stopping to consider whether a comment or e-mail might be inappropriately partisan wold violate the Hatch Act with that decision-making process itself," Akaka said. "That interpretation makes no sense. The Hatch Act exists for good reasons, but it clearly allows outside groups to come to VA facilities to help our veterans exercise their right to vote."

-- William R. Levesque, Times staff writer