[El Gato]

Heinlen wrote SciFi books.
James Madison wrote The Constitution.

While true, it's also somewhat irrelevant. Under the Constitution, as written by Madison, the States, not the federal government, determined who could vote, in Presidential elections or any other. Many states restricted voting to those who owned property. All restricted it to men.

For centuries, Switzerland required all men to show up with their militia weapon, or they could not vote. Worked pretty well for them.

In Presidential elections the state legislatures could directly appoint the electors if they so chose, or delegate the selection to the governor or a "blue ribbon commission", by passing the people altogether, except in so far as the actions of electors so chosen might affect their election chances at the next election.

[allmendream]

I knew when I saw the suggestion of military service for voting rights that a Freeper would mention Starship Troopers.

And I must point out that the voting franchise was granted for nonmilitary service as well. As pointed out in this thread, many people are not a good fit for military service.

To vote you just have to be an adult, a citizen (for now), a resident, and care enough to get your behind to the polls. Almost 40% of Americans don’t bother to exercise their voting rights.

[SJSAMPLE]

They could make only monkeys eligible to vote and it would be just as bad an idea. Our country is not great solely because of its military. Thinking so is foolish and narrow-sighted.

We have a great economy, we have a great form of government and yes, we have a great military.

Giving preferential voting treatment to veterans is like a two-legged stool. Imbalanced and unsustainable.

And don't focus solely on presidential elections. Our country is governed at the local level and redefining "citizen" in some misderived effort to extrapolate battlefield effectiveness across the entire country would surely end The Republic.