Are You Automatically Registered For Selective Service When You Register To Vote?

Annals for the vote, not the draft

Pfc. Janelle Zalkovsky of the 101st Airborne Division is shown serving in Iraq in 2005. (U.Southward. Army handout/Reuters)

THE QUESTION of whether women should — like men — be required to register for the military typhoon was thrust into the national conversation concluding week by Army and Marine Corps leaders who favor the idea. At present that women are eligible for all combat roles, it is a natural question.

But is the Selective Service system needed at all, for men or women? Wouldn't information technology make more than sense, as presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton suggested during Wed'south CNN town hall, to put the effort instead into registering all Americans to vote when they plow 18?

Gen. Mark A. Milley, Army chief of staff, and Gen. Robert B. Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, Tuesday told the Senate Military Committee that they favor having all Americans who are physically qualified register for the draft, which applies to those ages 18 through 25. The comments favoring the inclusion of women in Selective Service registration constitute a first in the Defense Department. Other armed forces leaders — including Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Army acting secretary Patrick Murphy — did non endorse the idea, pushing instead for a national fence on the effect.

Congress should take upwardly that proposition and start with a clear-eyed assessment of what purpose is served by the Selective Service system and the millions of dollars devoted to it. The draft hasn't been used since 1973. The all-volunteer military has proved successful and is favored by armed forces leaders over forcing people into service for relatively brusk terms. Given the 402-to-2 vote in the Firm against a draft in 2004, it'due south articulate at that place is no political support for its comeback. The strongest statement for maintaining the registration organization is in the remote possibility of a major calamity against the country, only other government databases, nonexistent when the Selective Service Human activity was enacted in 1917, are bachelor to assist in a mobilization.

A far more urgent need for the country is getting people registered to vote. Information technology is estimated that 24 percentage of eligible Americans, or 51 million people, are not registered to vote, and studies show the percentage is fifty-fifty higher for those between the ages of 18 and 24. One big reason is an outmoded and error-prone arrangement of registration that needlessly frustrates access to the ballot. When U.Southward. citizens reach the age of 18, they should automatically be registered.Once they are signed up to vote, they should stay registered. It's what Ms. Clinton talked most terminal week in New Hampshire, and a similar plan has been backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). States take the ways to do this, as Oregon is showing with a system in which anyone who has or obtains a driver'south license is automatically registered to vote unless they opt out. California plans to follow accommodate. Voting is a borough duty. Government should make it easier, not harder, to do.

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Are You Automatically Registered For Selective Service When You Register To Vote?,

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/register-for-the-vote-rather-than-the-draft/2016/02/05/a8691e14-cb81-11e5-88ff-e2d1b4289c2f_story.html

Posted by: quillenthiss1948.blogspot.com

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