because I do not believe that the sovereign States will be satisfied to have greater weight given to smaller States simply by reason of their adoption of a smaller voting age limit than their own.

Senator BAYH. With due respect I submit that the argument against the lowering of the voting age and the wisdom of it would be more compelling if we were discussing an amendment to lower the voting age, which we are not. This is going to be left with the States. I personally feel that lowering the voting age is good but we are not trying to do that by this amendment. That is another one which has been introduced.

The Senator from Nebraska feels very strongly the voting age in his State should be lowered, but he does not believe in going the constitutional route.

Senator HRUSKA. That is right.

Senator BAYH. We are talking about different things here.

Senator HOLLAND. The best way to force that would be by the adoption of the popular election of the President and Vice President, because I think the thing would follow by way of a federalization of the complete election machinery laws of the States, and that is such a great departure from what the constitutional convention required. and what the constitutional convention decided was sound philosophy, and what has been regarded as sound philosophy ever since, and which by all the recent elections appears to be a philosophy that is adhered to at least with reference to voting age by the great preponderance of the States, that I just do not want to see us take a step which forces something that I think is unsound, and that besides, when submitted separately is being rejected so generally in recent years.

Senator HRUSKA. Mr. Chairman, it should be observed that when the senior Senator from Florida appears before us today he is assuming a very familiar role. It is the role of one who has repeatedly brought to committees and to the floor of the Senate a basic document, a basic proposal, almost a Magna Carta type of survey of the situation, and in a fashion which makes for intelligent deliberation of this great issue.

Repeatedly he has come before the Judiciary Committee in this role. I want to commend him for bringing to us the summary of the arguments, and the basic facts and information which are involved in this debate.

Senator HOLLAND. Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate that overgenerous statement. I am simply stating my convictions, and they are pretty firm convictions, and they go into many more fields than this particular one.

I do not like the present trend towards federalization of so many vital activities, and this is just one of them.

Senator HRUSKA. The Senator is very modest, and it may be that he is stating his own convictions, but he will find them widely shared and widely held. I do believe that the statement, Mr. Chairman, of the Senator from Florida is particularly effective when he judges the practicality of trying to undertake to abolish amendment No. 12 to our Constitution completely, and substitute a purely popular vote for the President.

I venture to say that he will receive the support of many Senators and of many State legislatures and I am one of them.

Senator HOLLAND. Mr. Chairman, that makes me feel like I am on even stronger ground because I have such great confidence in the sound judgment of the Senator from Nebraska.

Senator HRUSKA. I thank the Senator from Florida for that undeserved compliment, but I accept it. It is nice to hear compliments. Just to summarize, I think that a common ground is found in all of these propositions, that is, that the individual elector should be abolished.

Second, it is agreed that we should abolish the present system of the participation of the Congress in election of a President and Vice President, if a required majority of electoral votes is not obtained by any one candidate.

Where we get into trouble is to abandon the electoral vote system as such. It is a weighted system based upon the famous great compromise in 1787. It is the abandonment of that allocation of electoral votes to States which accounts for the great difference between the position of direct election and other plans.

There are several points in the Senator's testimony that I would like to refer to. The first is to be found on page 3 of his testimony in which he says, in effect, that the same reasons that existed in 1788 for fixing the number of electors of each State on the electoral system still exist and in even greater degree and operate as strong arguments against the abandoning of that electoral system vote.

We have in the past heard constantly about the 11 Southern States who have sort of played the central role in some of the great political decisions that have faced Congress. Yet there are many States in other sections of the country which play a central role in regard to other great current political issues.

I refer, for example, to the seven States in the Missouri River Valley. We have a regional interest in the allocation of water and power, and also in the matter of the importance accorded those who produce basic agricultural products, and very often these issues find themselves in sharp collision with the populous areas of the Nation. We ought to bear in mind constantly the fact that it will not be long before 70 percent of the population of this Nation will be residing in 10 percent of the territory, that territory will not include the seven States in the Missouri River Valley, nor will that 10 percent include the 20-some States that are in the Mississippi Valley area.

Then we have the 10 Rocky Mountain States, which have certain. economic and political problems and issues confronting them, and which also will find direct collision with the populous areas of the Nation. The Great Lakes States, the Northwestern States, the Southwestern States, all of them have particular interests and not only in the field of water and power, but oil and lumber and basic farm products.

I venture to say that one of the biggest collisions that we are going to witness will be over the efforts to find a greater way of solving the problems of the city. This issue is one which this Senator speaks as strongly and is emphatically as anyone else, but not to the exclusion or the downgrading of nonurban problems of this Nation, which will comprise some 85 to 90 percent of the territory of the United States of America.

Senator HOLLAND. And which will be the part of the Nation which will enable the rest to eat and to wear clothes.

Senator HRUSKA. And to have a shelter, and to have fuel, and to have many other things. One of the issues that has come up most recently is the matter of oil imports and oil production, and there are some populous areas of the Nation, in particular, in the northeastern area that wants certain concessions which the oil and gas producing States of this Nation are wary about allowing. In the opinion of the Senator from Florida, is not this type of issue, economic and social in character, the kind which we will be facing in the future, and thus isn't it one of the reasons for believing that there is still good reason for having a weighted system of electing the President and Vice President of the United States?

Senator HOLLAND. Well, that type of problem is not only economic and social, but it is fundamental in the consideration of the Federal Government under which we live. It is completely fundamental to it, and those who want to centralize everything here in Washington lose sight of the immensely necessary functions performed by the very States which the distinguished Senator has mentioned.

Senator HRUSKA. The Senator has outlined those functions by a long list starting at page 6 of his statement, and extending on to page 7. Although it is a long list, yet it is incomplete, and I know that, if he did not say so in his statement, the Senator would readily acknowledge that it is incomplete.

I want to suggest to the Senator from Florida that this Senator is a member of the National Commission for the Revision of Federal Criminal Laws. We are functioning now. We hope to have, later this year, a preliminary report.

I would like to report to him here at this time, as I have before in personal discussion, that one of the first major questions that came before that Federal Commission was to determine whether or not the police power of the Federal Government should be increased, to take over many of the fields which he lists so painstakingly on pages 6 and 7 of his prepared statement.

If an enlarged Federal jurisdiction for police power were adopted, it would mean inevitably the creation of a national police force, and of course it would break down further the federated system of our Republic, whereby the States are supposed to function more actively in those areas than the Federal Government.

The Senator is aware of that. Have you any comment on that, Senator Holland?

Senator HOLLAND. My sole comment is that I agree so thoroughly with the philosophy expressed by the Senator from Nebraska, which I think is in accord with what I have already expressed, that so far as I am concerned, I just do not want to disturb the federated system or the Federal system under which we live, and I think that when we do it, we strike a great blow to the philosophy under which this Nation has lived and prospered and succeeded and has become the greatest nation on the earth. I do not want to see the States further downgraded, and that is exactly the course that is suggested by the popular election amendment and by other matters which take away from important States in this structure, important from the standpoint of

supplying food, of supplying oil, of supplying timber, of supplying other absolutely necessary commodities, take away from such States their present weight or a large part of it.

I shall never be a party to doing that, and I call the attention of this committee to the fact that not only is my State one of the ones which would be upped a little in its influence in the national elections, upped more than my compilation shows, because we have had such a great increase in population since 1960, but it is also one of the nine most populous States, which under another part of my statement could control the election, if the popular election should happen to throw those nine populous States together.

Senator BAYH. Would the Senator yield?

Senator HRUSKA. Surely.

Senator BAYH. This is one point which I could not envision, how nine States could possibly elect a President. Would you explain that to us, please? The only rationale for that is that all the people in those nine States would have to vote for the same man.

Senator HOLLAND. The point would be that those nine States have 51.5 percent of the population.

Senator BAYH. Which would mean

Senator HOLLAND. That if the votes in those nine States were divided exactly as the votes in the other 41 States and the District of Columbia, we would still in those nine States elect the President, because they just have to have a majority of the population.

Now you have to assume some things, that the weather will be pleasant to us in all those nine States, that the weather may be the same in the whole area, which is not often the case. You have to assume that the participation in voting will be in accordance with the population, but the fact is that those nine States, if they voted exactly in the same proportion that the other 41 States did, divided their votes in that proportion, they would command the results of the election, because they just happen to have more people than the rest of the Nation put together, and there is not any way to get around it, so it is a possibility.

I am the first to admit that it does not follow that those nine States would necessarily vote together, but you are setting up a system even worse than the present system. Under the present system 11 States, by their electoral vote, can control the result of the election, and under your proposal nine could do so.

That fact, plus the fact that I think the centralization of power in the whole election machinery in the legislative field would follow makes me so completely opposed to this approach that I could not overstate the degree of my opposition.

Now it is a pleasant thing to talk about a vote in every State counting just as much as another, but what you are doing by advancing that proposal is saying something that has not been said since the Founding Fathers decided in the Constitutional Convention in 1887 that States should have weight because they are sovereign States, and because they will continue to control much of the lives of their people and the transients who go through there by their laws, that States as States should have weight, and you propose to do away entirely with that concept.

I am just not in favor of that concept. I think it is unsound and I think it is a very great departure from the philosophy under which

this Nation was created and under which it has prospered as has no other nation on the face of the globe. I think it is a basic element in our prosperity, in our success, in our growth. The States had kept large areas of control within their jurisdiction, in spite of the fact that there have been aggressive people here who wanted to federalize everything. The States have up to now managed to hold most of the things within their control that directly affect the daily life and ownership of property of their people. I want that to continue to be the case.

Senator BAYH. So does the Senator from Indiana, let me suggest. But in my judgment we are arguing about apples and pears. We are not arguing the same thing. I thank the Senator from Nebraska for permitting me to interrupt.

Senator HRUSKA. The chairman's comments are always worthwhile whether they are in the midst of this Senator's questions or anybody else's.

Senator BAYH. Thank you.

Senator HRUSKA. Senator Holland, we have frequently heard this argument: "Every other officer in America is elected by the largest number of popular votes, including the Governors, the Senators, the Congressmen, and right on down the line. How can we explain to our young people and to the concerned citizens of America and to the world why we allow a method of electing the President and Vice President under which they may not get the majority of the popular vote." It is argued that a President would not be able to govern effectively, without a popular majority, because there is always that haunting thought that he had not received a majority of the popular vote.

Now in answer to that specifically, and I think your statement is a general answer to it, would not one of the most simple answers be to explain to the young people and the thoughtful citizens and to the other countries of this world that they ought to take a lesson in civics, read the Constitution, history, and learn the reason for having this weighted system of voting by States, instead of a popular vote over the Nation as a whole? Would not that be one of the most simple and effective answers to the young citizens?

Senator HOLLAND. That of course would be a good answer, and I hope it will be made. I have always approached, and I have talked in many places on this same field, that those who want to preserve the States and want to preserve the State weight in this election, and the State control of many other functions which are also vital, as is the control of the election machinery, should be the ones that promote, should be the ones who oppose this kind of proposal, because those who want to destroy the State weight are the ones who generally support this kind of proposal.

I am not suggesting that anybody in this Senate or in the Congress as a whole who takes that point of view really has gone that far, but I am just saying that in my opinion, if they think it through entirely, they will see that they are proposing to cut one of the bulwarks of this federated type of nation out from under it, when they propose this popular election, and that they are moving to downgrade statehood.

Now, I can see how some philosopher somewhere would take that position. I can see how some politicians in the very large States could