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Record Verification for Political Candidates

Verify statements made by political candidates who are veterans
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In the United States it has been quite common for people to run for public office using their military service and background as one of their qualifications.

Unfortunately, as both state and federal levels, we have seen some fraud occur. People who run for office saying they were in the military and having never in fact served. Then there are others who actually served in the military but feel compelled to heavily embellish their records, or make use of outright falsehoods, in order to gain favor with voters.

Under the current US Freedom of Information Act, limited portions of a person's military service record are available to a person filing an FOIA request. However, the portions of a service record which would be most useful in exposing fraud are not available to the public through the FOIA.

Here's the idea. When someone runs for public office and uses their military background as a qualification, allow members of the public to submit any statements (literature, press clippings, audio or video tape) made by the veteran, who is a political candidate, to the National Record Center in St. Louis for verification.

If a person claims to be a veteran who was wounded in combat and puts that in his campaign literature. You can take a copy of that campaign literature, mail it to St. Louis with an appropriate fee, and receive a response back telling you if the guy was wounded as he claims, or if he's making it up.

I'm a strong believer in health records of veterans remaining private, but if some guy is going to run for office and talk about his war wounds on the television, radio and in campaign literature and news articles. Then the public should have a right to know if he's the genuine article or not.

Madisonman, Jan 29 2001

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       If they have a waiting period to buy a gun, why not a waiting period for candidacy for a dangerous weapon like public office! Might even make exactly the same background checks!
lee, Jan 29 2001
  
      
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