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his recommendation-more nearly approximates the popular vote. Do you suggest this is an asset and an attribute?

Senator HOLLAND. That is an asset. It does count the popular vote, but it still allows the popular vote in each State to be counted against the electoral vote weight value from that State, still believing that the States as sovereign units of Government should be, as they have been since the beginning, allowed to count in this selection of a Presi

dent and Vice President.

Senator BAYH. That criterion, the nearness to conforming to popular vote, recommends the system more highly to me than the present system. However, it does not assure us that the man who sits in the White House is the man who received the most popular votes. My principal reason for supporting the popular vote is that it is the only system that guarantees that the man who sits in the White House is going to have received the most votes.

Now the proportionate system, the district system, and other electoral alternatives that have been suggested in good faith by some of our colleagues in the Senate and House do not provide this guarantee. I am extremely concerned about that. In the times in which we live, and in which large numbers of our young people, particularly, are looking at our system very critically, and we talk about democracy and the representative form of government and the people having the opportunity to make the choice, and I am extremely concerned about the impact that the election of a President who has fewer votes than the man he runs against would have on these people, on the stability of our Government at home. I think the statement that the President made some time in late October to the effect that it would be impossible to govern or extremely untenable to govern if you did not have more votes than the man he is running against, that this is the real number one problem with our present system.

With all due respect to my friend from Florida, his system does not guarantee other results. Now I do not know whether he has a variation of his system that would guarantee that the man who wins has the most votes. This is, as I see it, the number one criterion in all elections in the country, except for the President and Vice President. Sentor HOLLAND. Well, I respect the Senator's opinion. I think that it is wholly important to continue to respect the authority and the election law matters of the various States. The Senator knows how divided the States are, for instance, on the single question of the age, the appropriate age for electors. There has not been a single State since Kentucky went on the 18-year level, other than the two new States, one of whom came in with a 19-year level and the other with 20, there has not been a single State of the older States, the older 48, that has had this question suggested to it of lowering the voting age, but has turned it down.

My recollection is there are about 11 of those that have done so, and they have gone all the way from large States, Michigan, for instance, New York in a less direct way, because it was a feature only in a general constitutional revision, but many of them just on the single presentation of that question: Shall the voting age be decreased from 21, which was retained in most of those States as the age of majority, to

18, and some of them to a different age. There has not been a single State since Kentucky adopted the 18-year limit to reduce the age limit.

I do not want to see a federalization of this matter, which I am sure would follow the adoption of the amendment proposing a popular election, because obviously the people of Florida, for instance, the State which I represent in part, which has a 21 age limit, would look across the imaginary line which divides them from Georgia, which has an 18year age limit, and would see Georgia citizens counted disproportionately to Florida citizens in the matter of election of President and Vice President.

Senator BAYH. Of course that does not

Senator HOLLAND. The question is whether we want federalization of our election machinery, which was very jealously kept within the States by the Founding Fathers. I am one of those who does not want to see that additional federalization. We have had too much of it already. We have had too much centralized government in my humble opinion, and that I think would follow as night follows day, if the popular election of President and Vice President became the constitutional method.

Senator BAYH. This would be up to the States. There is nothing in the amendment that would necessarily reach this conclusion. The subject that concerns me, upon which I wanted to see if the Senator had any further opinions, was this matter of always electing a President who has more votes than the man he is running against.

Senator HOLLAND. He might have more votes growing entirely out of the difference between the voting age in the various States, in the event of a close election, and that would not be a very satisfactory result, if I may say to my distinguished friend.

In the event of a close popular election, it might easily be based on the question of different voting ages or different registration requirements or different absentee voting laws, or different residential requirements for qualification as voters, and any of those results in a very close election might come about, and they would not at all necessarily represent a popular favoritism for the man.

Senator BAYH. It would represent the most votes being cast for one candidate. I might call my colleague's attention to the 1968 election. The States of Virginia and Missouri both were entitled to 12 electoral votes. Under the proportional system, although President Nixon got 43 percent of the vote in Virginia, and Vice President Humphrey got 43 percent of the vote in Missouri, entitling each of the men in question to get 5.2 percent of the electoral votes of those respective states, Mr. Humphrey was required to get almost 200,000 more votes on the popular scale, to be entitled to the same number of electoral votes. That 200,000 is twice the difference between Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kennedy in 1960.

So just looking at the one problem, how do we explain to our young people, our concerned citizens, and the world a system which we sug gest they follow, where the people are to make the choice, but it has built into it this disparity, which invites the election of a man who has fewer votes than the man he is running against. In my judgment that is asking for tragedy in these times.

Senator HOLLAND. Well, may I say respectfully that it has not proved difficult for me to explain this to young people or old people.

People in my State by the great majority favor the State having some weight some place in the Federal system of government, and do not like to see the State downgraded as would be the case under the popular election amendment, and I have not found it difficult to explain that.

To the contrary I think I would find it very difficult to explain to my people that the State of Georgia should be allowed to vote all of its people down to 18, whereas we would be held to the 21 limit, and yet all the votes thrown together to decide who had the most.

Senator BAYH. Of course the State Legislature of Florida can make that determination.

Senator HOLLAND. I find it very easy to explain my approach to this matter, and very impossible to explain the other approach. I do not believe that many people now want to see the States downgraded, when it comes to the actual voting of people. I do not believe that they want to see the States downgraded.

I listed in my statement 20 or 25 aspects of life which are vital, which are governed by State law, in spite of all the encroachments that we have had up to now, and I think that people generally cherish their State government and want to have the continued right to determine things which are vital to them, including the question of what their election laws shall be.

Senator BAYH. Well, we permit that. Under our amendment the election laws shall still be established by the States. I salute the Senator for mentioning all of these aspects that rightly fall under the province of State government. However, I take issue with him when he suggests that the election of the President should be a State function instead of a function of the people who live therein, and I would like to suggest it seems to me that many of the people are beginning to feel that they have been neglected.

In the last Gallup poll that I saw on this subject, it showed that 81 percent of the people across this country were in favor of not just electoral reform, but thought they should have a direct personal right to vote for President. Now apparently we are making different judgments on what this means. But I think it means the people of this country say that the time has come to make this major revision that the Senator and I feel needs to be made, although we suggest different vehicles. I suggest that the only one that we should follow is the one that guarantees the results which most of us accept in our senatorial races, in our Governors' races and our congressional races, indeed our State legislative races; namely, that the man that gets the most votes wins.

The direct popular vote system is the only one that guarantees that. Senator HOLLAND. Mr. Chairman, might I at this time interject something which adds to the statement I made before this committee last year on this matter of the age of electors. This comes from the Library of Congress. We had asked for it. The first State they mention had voted I think the day before I appeared before this committee, and I stated that they had rejected the amendment. Let me read, however, this paragraph from the report of the Library of Congress:

In 1967 the voters in Maryland rejected the new constitution which would have lowered the voting age to 19. In the 1968 elections the voters of Hawaii rejected a proposal to lower the voting age there from twenty to eighteen.

This was the only proposed revision of the constitution to be defeated. (Amendments covered 23 sections of the constitution.)

The voters in that new State were evidently quite selective in the way they voted.

In Tennessee the voters in the 1968 election rejected a proposal to allow a constitutional convention to consider lowering the voting age to 18. The Nebraska electorate rejected a proposal to lower the voting age to 19.

I repeat what I said in my earlier statement. No State since the Kentucky amendment was adopted, and I forget the year of that amendment, but it was a good long time ago

Senator HRUSKA. Would the Senator yield?

Senator HOLLAND. Yes.

Senator HRUSKA. I do not know the source of the Senator's information, but may I add to that list of States which rejected proposed amendments to their constitution to lower the vote to 19 years of age my native State of Nebraska, which turned down such a proposal. Senator HOLLAND. I had just read that.

Senator HRUSKA. It was by a close vote, but it turned it down.
Senator HOLLAND. I had just

Senator HRUSKA. And against the personal judgment of this Senator, but nevertheless the voice of the people is supreme in my State on such questions, and I would like to add that as one of the statistical items of information.

Senator HOLLAND. I thank the Senator for his remarks. However, while he was chatting with his assistant I had just put that fact in

Senator HRUSKA. I am sorry.

Senator HOLLAND (continuing). In the record. Nebraska is one of the three States that last November had this question up, not in exactly the same form. Hawaii knocked down the amendment reducing it from 20 to 18. Tennessee knocked down the amendment to permit the calling of a convention which would have lowered the voting age to 18, and Nebraska rejected the proposal to lower the voting age to 19, and there is nothing showing that any State since the Kentucky action of so many years ago, looking at the picture now, has decided that it is sound to lower the voting age of its voters.

Senator BAYH. It probably would maintain that judgment if this were enacted. May I say to my colleague from Nebraska that I think it is proper, because of his efforts on this committee, that we include data from his State two times. I have no objection.

Do you have some questions for our colleague?

Senator HOLLAND. May I say on this point since we have discussed it at some length, that I do not have the figures as to how many State legislatures have considered submission of such an amendment, but it is a very large number of States, and the fact is I would doubt if there is any State that has not had such a proposal before it, so that the general attitude of legislatures and of people, of voters wherever the question has been voted upon now for many years, has been to reject that change. Yet the Senator's amendment would incorporate in the constitution a provision which makes for an unbalance between the State because four of them do now have reduced voting ages, two at 18, one at 19, and one at 20, and would, I think, force either a uniformity or what I fear much more, a federalization of this question,

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.

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