Military and Absentee Voting in the United States: History and Modern Practice

Author(s):  
Donald S. Inbody

The advent of absentee voting for American citizens began with the desire on the part of soldiers to participate in the electoral process. It was aided by politicians who wanted the support of those soldiers. The rise of absentee voting was later extended to nonmilitary Americans living overseas or otherwise away from their home precincts. Resistance to absentee voting was strong at first, largely on philosophical grounds (i.e., the question of why someone away from home would be interested in voting, or absentee voting inviting vote fraud). It was also resisted by political parties who were convinced that those voters may vote for the opposition candidate. Gradually, in the post-World War II years, nearly all resistance faded but never disappeared. Vestigial perceptions of the voting habits of military personnel remained as late as the first years of the 21st century. Congress was convinced to pass several voting rights laws that eventually extended the right to vote to all Americans serving in the military or living overseas, although some barriers remain to be overcome.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
Galdanov Galdan A. ◽  

The article is devoted to the historical significance of the Yalta (Crimea) Conference held from 4 to 11 February 1945 for the history of Mongolia. The struggle of the Mongolian People’s Republic for independence and its participa-tion in World War II are the subject of constant study of Russian and Mongolian his-toriography. However, as a rule, these events are considered partially and are not an independent subject of research. The process of restoring the sovereignty of Mongo-lia has gone a long grassroots and difficult way. In 1911 Mongolia declared itself a sovereign state, and after that for almost fifty years it defended the right to be an in-dependent state, primarily in front of China, which remained the main sound-forming opponent of Mongolia’s sovereignty when it was reunited. China’s policy remained unchanged even after the military balance on this side changed in favor of the USSR. It was only after World War II that China officially recognized the independence of the Mongol People’s Republic. It is also worth noting the position of the allies of the USSR on the anti-Hitler coali-tion represented by the United States and the Great Britain on this question. Because of the strategic plans, the United States and the United Kingdom did not oppose it. But it should be emphasized that the United States carefully studied this question up to the trip of the American delegation to Mongolia in 1944. In the conclusion we have emphasized the important role of the Yalta (Crimea) Conference for Mongolia.


Author(s):  
Richard Rosen

AbstractAs many of you may remember from your first-year Tort and Constitutional Law courses, courts recognize the right of competent adults to refuse medical treatment, even if necessary to save their lives; this generally includes the right to refuse immunizations from diseases, particularly if the vaccine has not yet been approved by the Food & Drug Administration. As you also undoubtedly know, servicemembers are different. To maintain the strength and readiness of the armed forces, military personnel must undergo necessary medical treatment. Otherwise, if they become casualties to disease or other treatable disabilities, servicemembers become burdens on their units, and their jobs must be assumed by others—often leaving their units short-handed. Their illnesses or disabilities thus affect the ability of their units to accomplish their missions and may jeopardize the safety and lives of their fellow servicemembers. Indeed, until World War II, the majority of combat deaths in military units engaged in combat were due to infectious diseases rather than direct combat injuries.


Author(s):  
Stanislav Polnar

Since the end of World War II, the investigation of anti-state delinquency of military personnel was realised by the military intelligence. It originated with Czechoslovak military units in the USSR and were influenced by Soviet security authorities. After 1945 and 1948 these bodies remained in the structure of the Ministry of National Defense, but from the beginning of the 1951 they moved to the structure of the Ministry of the Interior following the Soviet model. The legal status of these bodies was always unclear and did not correspond to the legal regulation. Another important article in the investigation of the political delinquency of soldiers was the military prosecutor’s office as part of the socialist-type prosecutor’s office, which was subjected to general trends in the regulation of criminal proceedings.


1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michla Pomerance

Ever since the principle of self-determination entered the lexicon of international politics during World War I, American foreign policymakers have had to contend with problems revolving around that concept. The need to favor one or another claimant, each waving the banner of self-determination and invoking the “right to determine its own fate,” continues to present dilemmas, often extremely troubling ones, for U.S. decisionmakers. Examples from recent history come readily to mind. The entire post-World War II decolonization process entailed an endless series of such dilemmas, and even after formal decolonization was all but completed, such nagging issues as Katanga, Biafra, and Eritrea remained, not to mention the problems of South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Indochina. Indeed, even within America’s own imperial domain, the United States was faced with the conflicting demands of the Puerto Rican nationalists and the majority of the Puerto Rican electorate, the claims of the Marianas as against those of Micronesia as a whole, and demands for cultural autonomy on the part of diverse ethnic groups.


2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-31
Author(s):  
John Young

As anthropologists we are often preoccupied with our own circumscribed studies of local communities. Only during World War II did we embrace the global dimensions and importance of cultural differences. Many Western anthropologists who have recently, and as a matter of conscience, become concerned with globalization have abandoned the concept of culture as an organizing principle, perhaps in part because they confuse cultural relativism with moral relativism, and perhaps because it is fashionable to denounce their forebears. As professionals I think we must deal with the cultural dimensions of a problem first before making moral judgements. I remain convinced that the concept of culture is a useful tool for understanding and shaping macro-level political understanding and dialogue, in somewhat the same way as Ruth Benedict and others demonstrated more than half a century ago. American policy failures in the international arena, of which the war in Afghanistan is one result, are related to arrogance (ethnocentrism) which breeds ignorance of other cultures and a lack of comparative perspective on American culture as well. Human rights is one issue where the United States is blindly pushing its own agenda to its own detriment.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Trombley Averill

This chapter looks at how, in the former Axis powers of Japan and Germany, the United States occupation authorities initially pursued policies that treated democratization and demilitarization as virtually synonymous. They believed a democracy could not flourish in either Japan or the Federal Republic of Germany until the military traditions had been purged from their national character and consciousness. The former aggressors faced total disarmament. Initial plans—embodied most drastically by the Morgenthau Plan to turn Germany into a pastoral country—were severe and uncompromising. However, once the Soviet Union had successfully acquired the atomic bomb, the United States concluded that measured rearmament in both countries was essential for the defense of democracy and the free world.


2020 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Justyna Włodarczyk

The article uses posthumanism and animal studies as a framework for making sense of B.F. Skinner’s wartime project of training pigeons to guide missiles, with emphasis on explaining the negative response of the donors and the public. The article first considers the hypothesis that the donors’ incredulity was evoked by the species of the animal. During World War II the United States began a massive program for the training of dogs for the military, and the campaign received unanimously positive publicity in the media. Possibly, thus, dogs were perceived as capable of bravery and sacrifice while pigeons were not. However, messenger pigeons had been traditionally incorporated into the war machine and were perceived as heroic. Thus, the analysis moves on to suggest that the perception of the project as ridiculous was related to the type of behavior performed by the animals: a behavior perceived as trained (artificially acquired) and not instinctive. The analysis then shifts into how the distinction between what is perceived as instinctive (natural) and learned (artificial) behavior influences the reception of different performances involving animals. Performances built around “natural” behaviors generate much stronger positive responses, even if the naturalness of these behaviors is a carefully crafted effect.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
MARK PITTENGER

Triumphant capitalism seems nowadays to be a fact of nature, requiring no name and admitting, as Margaret Thatcher famously put it, of “no alternative.” Neither American Capitalism nor Transcending Capitalism shrinks from “naming the system,” as perplexed New Leftists once struggled to do when trying to articulate their own alternative. But having named it, neither book takes as its primary task to define or fully describe that economic and sociocultural system. Rather, both are concerned principally with how twentieth-century American intellectuals, broadly construed, oriented and addressed themselves to the idea of capitalism in light of their respective historical moments’ shifting economic and social realities. Some reformist thinkers came to deny the efficacy of “capitalism” for describing a political–economic order which they believed to be rapidly passing away; their rivals to the right, meanwhile, mounted a reinvigorated defense of the term and its classical implications. While Daniel Bell announced in his 1960 essay on “The End of Ideology in the West” that post-World War II intellectuals had achieved a “rough consensus” on the desirability of the welfare state and political pluralism, the essays in American Capitalism suggest a more complicated picture. The “age of consensus,” that favorite punching bag of recent historians of the United States, takes a few more ritual knocks in the Lichtenstein volume. But the book's essays, in conjunction with Howard Brick's monograph, do establish that the lively discourse on the future of American society which proceeded in the aftermath of World War II was also part of a continuous debate that ran across most of the century's course. Bell suggested one theme of that debate when he argued that Western intellectuals must turn their attention away from political economy in order to address “the stultifying aspects of contemporary culture,” which could not be adequately framed in traditional right-versus-left terms. If Bell's generation, along with the younger New Left thinkers who were soon to appear, found the contradictions of capitalism to be decreasingly pressing, they would find sufficient challenge when they engaged instead with the knotty social and cultural issues of modern America.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
W. Howard McAlister ◽  
Jeffrey L. Weaver ◽  
Jerry D. Davis ◽  
Jeffrey A. Newsom

Optometry has made significant contributions to the United States military for over a century. Assuring good vision and eye health of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines is critical to maximizing the military functions necessary to achieve victory. There was little organization or recognition of the profession in World War I, but optometrists were essential in achieving the mission. Recognition of the profession of optometry was still limited in World War II but it was improving, especially with commissioning as officers occurring in the Navy. Through the Korean and Vietnam Wars, optometry grew in stature and strength with all services eventually commissioning all optometrists, and Army optometrists were assigned to combat divisions. Continuing through the more recent conflicts in the middle east, the profession has continued to make an impact and has become an essential part of the armed forces of the United States. Doctors of optometry are now an integral part of the Department of Defense. The nation cannot field an effective fighting force today without the dedicated performance of these officers.


Author(s):  
Thomas I. Faith

This chapter evaluates the successes and failures of the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) during the second half of the 1920s, in light of the organization's ultimate incapacity to influence foreign policy. By 1926, the CWS was a well-established organization capable of supporting the continuation of poison gas work into the foreseeable future. It had successfully influenced public policy to continue chemical warfare research after World War I. However, the CWS and its supporters failed to convince people to believe that gas warfare was humane. Public hostility toward chemical weapons ultimately led to the signing of international agreements prohibiting chemical warfare. This chapter discusses the CWS's sustained accomplishment during the period 1926–1929, with particular emphasis on its new chemical weapons initiatives in partnership with other departments and branches of the military; the United States' continued support for international efforts to prevent chemical warfare; and the CWS's reorganization into the U.S. Army Chemical Corps after World War II.


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