strongly advantageous position which they hold in a normal election and the inordinately advantageous position which they hold in a closely contested election of President and Vice-President. There is only one area in which those States can be afforded compensation for surrendering their present advantageous position with respect to selection of the executive branch of Government. That area is the legislature.

It is my proposal that, for their consent to popular election of the President and the Vice-President, the 15 least populous states each be given one additional member in the House of Representatives. This would increase the present House membership from 435 to 450-a 32% increase. The trivial resulting dilution in the House voting power of the other 35 states would be a not unreasonable price to pay for assuring the necessary support for a constitutional amendment enabling popular election of the President and the Vice-President.

The increase in House representation of the 15 least populous states, each of which presently has either one or two representatives, could be accomplished by constitutional provision that no state has less than two representatives and that every state presently having two representatives shall hereafter have no less than three. In order to assure the 15 least populous states that their House votes would never be diluted, it would be necessary to provide also that the size of the House be restricted to 450.

I accordingly suggest the following as the format of a constitutional amendment to be submitted to the states:

Section 1: Popular election of the President and of the Vice-President in such manner as may appear to the subcommittee most desirable.

Section 2: That, beginning with the first congressional reapportionment after ratification, each state shall have at least two representatives; that each state which, by virtue of the reapportionment following the 1960 census, had two or more representatives, shall at no time subsequent to the first congressional reapportionment after ratification have less than three representatives; and that no state shall have less representatives than a less populous state.

Section 3: That, beginning with the first congressional reapportionment after ratification, the House of Representatives shall consist of 450 members, except that the membership thereof shall be temporarily increased by the number required to afford representation to any new state, until the next decennial reapportionment, at which time the total membership shall once more decline to I respectfully submit that such proposed constitutional amendment would have excellent prospects of ratification.

450.

NOMINEES FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTOR COMMITTEE (NPEC)

With the Congressional District Plan for Reform of the Electoral College System in force, all political parties should nominate the best available candidates, two from each state and one from each congressional district, who could spend two or three days every four years to cast their vote for President and Vice President of the United States.

One hundred of the presidential electors are two from each of the 50 states. The District of Columbia has three. Under the Congressional District Plan 435 of the electors would be from congressional districts with an average population of 462,368. The qualifications and abilities of the candidates from congressional districts would be well known to the voters of their districts, and electors from the state at large would be as well or better known throughout the state as candidates for governor.

The Congressional District Plan will tend to distribute political action into two and at most three camps, rather than into many splinter parties which have proven to be unfortunate in nations abroad. The members of the Nominees for Elector Committee would be confined to members of the three parties amassing the highest electoral college vote.

When congressional districts become electoral college districts as well, the necessity for proper apportionment becomes two times more imperative than before. The importance of the district for dual purposes would be cumulative and as dual purpose districts they could become four or more times more important.

The Congressional District Plan could truly be the application of the “oneman one-vote" requirement of Supreme Court rulings.

Any artifice or misconstruction of these districts in gerrymandering would be four times less likely to be tolerated by an aroused public. The residents and voters of the district would take increased pride in their Congressman as well as great pride in the presidential elector they had nominated for their party. It is likely that the outstanding theologian, educator, community leader and citizen could be nominated and campaign for the office of presidential elector from his congressional district and thereby become eligible in later years to serve our Republic as a member of NPEC.

The district could take great pride in the presidential elector it had chosen. The high caliber of candidates for electors would make them useful in a number of capacities both during and after the campaign.

Great as the contribution made by the nominees for electors before the general presidential elections, it would be even a greater contribution after the election. The winners of the electoral college could gracefully join with the losing nominees of the three parties which commanded the highest number of presidential elector votes. To serve the best purposes of our Republic all of the nominees of the three leading parties which were successful in electing presidential electors could join to form a committee, official or non-official, to perform vitally needed services such as were performed by the two Herbert Hoover Commissions. The first Hoover Commission was authorized by the Republican 80th Congress (while Democrat Harry Truman was in the White House) and Hoover estimated a savings of $7 billion per year as a result of the proposals adopted. The Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report estimated that 72% of the proposals were adopted.

The cost of operation of NPEC could be defrayed by congressional appropriation in the same manner as the two Hoover Commissions were financed, or receive donations which would be non-profit, non-partisan and tax exempt. The stature of the Hoover Commissions is attested by their spending less than the total fund authorized, and doubtless NPEC would accomplish its objectives with equal frugality and would further cause economies in the increased present day billions in the operation of government.

The second Hoover Commission was authorized by the Republican 83d Congress during President Eisenhower's Administration and Hoover estimated savings of $3 billion a year upon completion of the work of the second commission. The Citizens Committee estimated that only 64% of those proposals were adopted.

Ten years have passed since those estimates were made; 20 years since the work of the first Hoover Commission began. If anything the jungle of federal bureaucracy has multiplied since then, even more than in the years before the two commissions went to work. The NPEC would have a major task in bringing order into the current chaos in a manner similar to the Hoover Commissions of the past.

Against the savings resulting from the second Hoover Commission's work, the average of $1.4 million expense for its two-year task proved a fine investment for the taxpayer. The commission returned $83,000 to the Treasury on September 18, 1955, unon completing its reports.

Various committees are formed such as the Committee of One Million, but the members of these committees are promoting only a movement and are comprised of only those who choose to join them, while members of NPEC have been nominated by their party as a choice for presidential electors from their states and congressional districts and would thereby be of greater stature and would command more influence with Members of Congress, and national, state and municipal administrations.

A wide range of eminently worthwhile activities would be open to NPEC. Nominees who had won their nominations in primaries could call attention to the virtues or faults of certain media in the communications field. The opinion of the committee might well foretell who would be the best prospects for presidential nomination in the next quadrennial election, thereby curtailing to some extent the emergence of dark-horses who necessarily are the product of current whims. These nominees could be outstanding educators, theologians and public affairs leaders who could not devote time to being Members of Congress or holding public office. War heroes as great in the military fields as General

Grant and General Eisenhower would be accorded merit in statesmanship only after they had displayed knowledge of government and diplomacy as some generals do.

Nominees for Presidential Elector shall become an Honor Guard for Liberty. They can be useful, constructive and great during the election for which nominated and after fulfilling their duties and retiring as electors they shall not retire from service to their country but continue in NPEC as promoters and guardians of a better way of life. The contemplation of a great unofficial Nominees of Presidential Elector Committee, NPEC, is fairly dependent upon an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, wherein each congressional district shall elect one elector by virtue of its one member in the House of Representatives and each state shall elect two electors at large who are representatives of its two U.S. Senators. It can be hoped that the 91st Congress will submit an amendment of this character to the state legislatures this session.

NPEC members could write articles and appear on such television programs as "Meet the Press," "Capitol Cloakroom," "Face the Nation," and "Issues and Answers," and they would be drawing-cards second only to the President, Vice President, President of the U.S. Senate and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The committee could name an unofficial spokesman for its membership in such fields as foreign affairs, agriculture, defense and other vital areas. The spokesman's publicized views would often carry more weight than the views of Cabinet members.

The United States Supreme Court itself, if wrong, would not be so supreme in the event of a series of decisions favorable to communists and other subversives which NPEC found obnoxious and not in the best of or found unfavorable to the continuation of the life of the Republic. Decisions from any source favorable to criminals may be deplored.

The membership of NPEC would select their own chairman, vice chairman and treasurer and secretary. The three officers would serve as the Executive Committee of NPEC. The Executive Committee would prepare By-laws and Amendments of its By-laws subject to acceptance or rejection of the members of NPEC. NPEC would provide a vacancy committee which would accept resignations and have the power to create vacancies "for cause" and would create a Committee of Appointments to keep the Committee up to its full and proper strength. Nominee for presidential electors in elections held subsequent to 1968 will be automaticaly qualified to accept membership in NPEC which is established in

1969.

A sensible and logical improvement in the electoral college system will be a fine testimonial in favor of individual initiative and the Republic form of government, as compared with dictatorship, wheher vicious or benign.

This is a most propitious time to persuade the Senate and House to enact the Congressional District Plan to reform the electoral college because if they enact a weaker plan or the direct popular vote plan, which will fail of ratification by 34 of the state legislatures, then we will have only what we now have, a sadly antiquated electoral college plan.

The most populous states continue to grow rapidly. Unless the electoral college is soon reformed by means of the congressional district plan, within a few years nine, eight or seven states can completely dominate the nomination and election of the President and Vice President. The voters from the other 41, 42 or 43 states will be in effect disfranchised under the popular vote plan, which is not a reform at all.

Each congressional district would have new prestige because of its double importance of electing a Congressman every two years and a presidential elector every four years. The voters in each district would be prompted to take double interest in the quality of candidates and in informing themselves about the vital issues to be decided.

The congressional district plan, coupled with the NPEC Plan, affords an avenue by which everyone so wishing could make a personal contribution to good government. If right, it provides a means for those supporting it to ask election to public office. For those already in office, from Constable up to the U.S. Senate, campaigning for the congressional district plan affords opportunity to earn and attain higher office,

January 16, 1969.

COMMITTEE TO ACHIEVE THE ENACTMENT AND RATIFICATION OF THE
BEST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT PLAN,

H. L. HUNT, Chairman.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL D. JAFFE, GENERAL COUNSEL, LIBERTY LOBBY

This statement is submitted as representing the views of LIBERTY LOBBY's 17,000 member Board of Policy, on behalf of the more than 200,000 subscribers to our monthly legislative report, Liberty Letter.

The Board of Policy, when presented with all of the major alternatives on the question of Electoral College reform, including "no change," "direct election," and "proportional division," voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Mundt Congressional District" Amendment. In fact, 65 percent of the Board favored the Mundt plan, as against 34 percent for all other choices combined.

There is general agreement today that the Electoral College system, as presently constituted, is in serious need of reform. The President of the United States is, and must be, the leader of all the people, and all of the states. Under the present system, however, a small number of our largest states exercise a disproportionate power in presidential elections. A President can be elected by the electoral votes of only 12 states, regardless of the size of his plurality in those states. Votes cast elsewhere become meaningless, since votes cast in the large states become magnified in importance.

In practice, this emphasis on the power of the large states means that dangerously disproportionate power in the selection of our President rests in the hands of a small number of political pressure groups, located primarily in a few large metropolitan areas in these states. The emphasis on these groups, which are often well-disciplined and susceptible to bribery, serves to distort American presidential campaigns to the serious detriment of the American people as a whole.

The present system causes presidential candidates to spend a disproportionate amount of their time in the largest states. It requires them to devote disproportionate time to issues of peculiar concern to groups within those states. And each voter's ballot is unfairly weighted depending upon the state in which he votes. A citizen of New York, for example, votes for 43 electors, while citizens of five states can vote for only three electors.

"Unit-rule" voting in the electoral college has the additional disadvantage of producing larger margins in the electoral vote than the national popular vote cast for the winning candidate would warrant. In 1960, John F. Kennedy, while winning barely 50 percent of the popular vote (and even that is in dispute), received a majority of 84 electoral votes. In 1964, Barry Goldwater, while receiving 38.5 percent of the popular vote, won only 9.6 percent of the electoral vote.

In last year's presidential election, Richard M. Nixon won the presidency with 301 electoral votes (55.9 percent), while winning only 43.2 percent of the popular vote. Both Hubert Humphrey (with 42.7 percent of the popular, and 35.6 percent of the electoral vote) and George Wallace (with 13.6 percent of the popular and 8.5 percent of the electoral vote) received electoral vote totals substantially lower than their support in the electorate.

Having briefly pointed out our objection to the electoral college system as it is presently constituted, we must also note that the system could be worse. We strongly object to proposals which would change the system for the sake of change. While advocating reform, we do not believe that failure to achieve such reform immediately will result in anything like the disaster predicted by many of the critics of the electoral college. But the adoption of some of the proposals for change currently being advocated could, we believe, do irreparable damage to our form of government.

In particular, we oppose all proposals for direct popular election of the President, because such a system would do violence to the federal nature of the American system of government. The United States is not, and was never intended to be, a mass democracy. This is a federal union of sovereign states, and any acceptable plan for the election of its highest official must respect state sovereignty. The constitutional system of presidential election was designed so that the President would be representative of the states, and the people of the states. There was never any contemplation of a mass "national electorate," and the election of our Presidents in a "national plebiscite" would be a highly

dangerous scheme, radically altering the balance of powers in our Constitutional system. The rights of the states, and their people, are presently under heavy attack, and Congress would be doing a grave disservice by stepping up this attack in the form of a Constitutional Amendment entirely removing the federal element from the presidential election process.

Another objection to the "direct election" schemes is that, when there is no absolute majority for one of the candidates, the electoral college can serve as a vital mediating force. It should be noted that, in spite of the claims of their proponents, the direct election plans presently before Congress have nothing to do with "majority rule." As in H.J. Res. 179, 40 percent of the popular vote would be sufficient for election. Keeping this in mind, it should be easy to see how retention of the electoral college can serve to prevent the disaster of the election of a President strongly opposed by a landslide majority of the American people.

In 1968, we recall, Richard Nixon and George Wallace won a combined total of 56.8 percent of the popular vote. It is clear that these votes were cast in repudiation of the past Administration, and in search of real and substantial changes in governmental policy. Yet Hubert Humphrey, candidate of the repudiated Administration, came within one half of one percent of receiving more popular votes than Mr. Nixon. Can any proponent of "direct election" really claim that Mr. Humphrey's election under such circumstances would have served the cause of national unity?

The Wall Street Journal, in a Jan. 13 editorial asked, "When an election comes down to a few thousand votes out of millions cast, is the difference really the expression of majority will? . . . in a hairbreadth close election, isn't there some sense in turning, as the present system would, to the candidate with broader geographical backing?" We believe that this is an important point. Schemes which would amend our Constitution in the name of the abstract principle of "majority rule" would not only distort the federal system, but would also fail to reflect the actual will of the majority of Americans.

A further point is that the present system invites fraud, by assigning excess value to votes in a few large states. A "direct election" system, however, would drastically intensify this unfortunate characteristic, by increasing the value of each vote, nationwide, in a close election. Bought and stolen votes from such places as Chicago and South Texas would count nationwide, rather than, as at present, within one state. The implications for the stability of our governmental system are clear. It might well have been impossible to inaugurate a President on schedule in 1961 if the existence of a “direct election" system had made it necessary for both parties to contest each disputed Cook County ballot through the courts.

President Nixon's proposed "proportional” plan would be preferable to direct popular vote, inasmuch as it would retain the states as part of the presidential election process, and would not, as would the "direct election" plan, take away the right of each state to as many electoral votes as it has members of Congress. This right, it will be recalled, was an essential part of the delicate compromise through which the Constitution was originally ratified by the states. However, the Nixon plan would take much of the real meaning out of the electoral college, and would not guarantee against the election of a minority President. Most important, its "40 percent" feature makes it totally unacceptable for reasons already discussed.

Liberty lobby supports the Mundt Amendment as a responsible change which will correct the major abuses of the present system, while retaining the federal nature of presidential elections. Under this proposal, the voters of each state will elect two electors statewide, and the voters of each congressional district will elect one elector to represent that district. Each citizen, in other words, will be entitled to vote for three electors, no matter where he lives. The voting power of Americans will be equalized, consistent with our federal system, and the distorting influence of the large states and their bloc votes will be eliminated. The Mundt Amendment is, rather than being a radical change of any kind, a return to the system contemplated by the Founding Fathers. James Madison states that the district system of choosing electors was "mostly, if not exclusively, in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted." It should be noted that there is nothing in present constitutional provisions to stop a state from choosing its electors by the district system if it so desires. Political realities, however, have kept any state from thus diluting its own influence. Constitu