The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced that it will no longer ban voter registration drives for veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country. The VA did not however decide to designate VA facilities as voter registration agencies. For the fourth time in six months, the VA has changes its policy on allowing voter registration drives at VA facilities. This announcement came the night before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee was scheduled to hold a hearing on S.3308, the Veteran Voting Support Act. The directive now allows election officials and nonpartisan groups to provide voter registration services and nonpartisan voter information. The VA news release states; "In their written policies, VA hospitals are required to establish the criteria they will use to evaluate requests from outside agencies to register voters, and to determine where, when, and how such registration activities will be conducted. They will also develop procedures to coordinate offers of assistance from state and local governments and from non-partisan organizations, and how to work with VA's Regional Counsel offices to determine whether or not groups offering registration help are non-partisan, as required by law." Understandably considering past events, this AlterNet article is a bit skeptical. Scott Rafferty was quoted as expressing doubt about those "procedures" the VA will develop. "Rafferty said the VA's new policy contained no standards or procedures for how non-profit groups would be vetted and approved for voter registration activities. He feared the new policy, which relies on local VA facilities to promulgate voter drive rules, could result in some locations encouraging voter registration while other do not, a scenario 'subject to political bias.'" Hopefully, being so close to the election, this new development will actually benefit some veterans.