subdivisions will be able to set their requirements for new voters well below 90 days for presidential elections. The four States which have already done this are: Wisconsin, 10 days; Ohio, 40 days; California, 54 days; Missouri, 60 days. In addition, six States have legislation pending to liberalize their residence requirements for presidential elections, including New York State, where Governor Rockefeller has proposed a special 30-day requirement for presidential elections.

As I just pointed out, on the basis of my survey of Governors on State and local residence requirements, I am aware that most State chief executives believe residence requirements for voting are and should be solely within the jurisdiction of the States. While I agree with them on the fundamental jurisdictional issue, I am afraid that there are many States and areas in which residence requirements will never be liberalized unless some minimal Federal action is taken. I believe that my 90-day amendment represents a reasonable and workable solution, without at the same time infringing unduly upon the prerogatives and responsibilities of the States.

Mr. Chairman, there are two other amendments before this committee in which I am very much interested. The first concerns the 18-year-old vote. I have introduced a constitutional amendment on this subject in the 87th Congress (S.J. Res. 67) and have introduced similar amendments in both the Senate and the House over the past 8 years. I strongly believe that 18 year olds, in this day and age, have sufficient education and a broad enough understanding of national issues to intelligently express themselves at the polls. I am delighted that the new administration has endorsed this proposal as it relates to the soon-to-be-considered District of Columbia election code.

It is the argument that additional educational advantages have led to the earlier maturity on the part of our young people as regards governmental affairs which I think is the strongest argument for this amendment.

We hear the argument that if a man is old enough to fight he is old enough to vote. That has some merit and is not to be lightly cast aside. But I do not believe it is the strongest argument in favor of lowering the voting age.

If I may indulge in a personal reference, my daughter, who studied the normal subjects in school, at 18 knew more about her Government and how it was run and who was qualified to run it in State, local, or National levels, than I did at 21. I think, eventually, we are going to come to this throughout the Nation. I personally think that young people at 18 should have the right to vote.

Next is the poll tax amendment.

Senator KEFAUVER. One other point about that is, that with modern science and medicine and medical care, the average life of our citizens has increased very greatly. I do not know the number of years, but the average age of the voter now is considerably older than it was, say, 20 years ago.

Senator KEATING. Yes.

Senator KEFAUVER. This would give us a better balance between youth and age, would it not?

Senator KEATING. I think it would; yes; you are entirely right, Mr. Chairman.

Finally there is the poll tax amendment. Senator Holland has introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish poll taxes (S.J. Res. 58) of which I am cosponsor with some 65 of my colleagues. This is indeed a fruitful area for electoral reform. The poll tax has long been used to discriminate against certain minority groups. The elimination of the poll tax would take away another lethal weapon from the arsenal of those who seek to limit the franchise.

Taking an overall look at these several pending electoral reforms, Mr. Chairman, I suggest that there is real justification for having this subcommittee report a comprehensive constitutional amendment, for the first time recognizing that our presidential election is a truly national election.

Such an amendment would abolish the electoral college and would establish procedures for electing the President and Vice President by popular vote. It would irrevocably proclaim the standard: One American, one vote.

Nothing would please me more than having this subcommittee take the bold step of reporting the Mansfield amendment and including in it liberalized provisions relating to residence requirements, such as the chairman and I have discussed, voting age, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other relevant voting requirements.

Mr. Chairman, I urge that our committee accept this challenge. We have a unique opportunity to frame a comprehensive and inclusive constitutional amendment on national elections. I firmly believe that this is one of the greatest and most important contributions which the Congress must today make, to see to it that the structure of our democracy is consistent with the pace and conditions of the 20th century.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator KEFAUVER. Thank you very much, Senator Keating.

The Chairman, of course, knows of your active and most intelligent interest in these various proposals since you first came to the House of Representatives many, many years ago.

Senator KEATING. Where I served with the chairman, with great pleasure, and where he added so much to our deliberations.

Senator KEFAUVER. Thank you, sir. It is very fine that you are continuing your interest and support. I know it will be persuasive to our colleagues in the Senate and the House and the public toward getting these resolutions and amendments passed.

We are highly pleased to have present our distinguished colleague, Senator Mundt of South Dakota, who is the sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution 12.

STATEMENT OF HON. KARL E. MUNDT, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA

Senator MUNDT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I say, first of all, it is a pleasure to be back before the chairman of this committee on a subject which is close to his heart, I know, and close to mine, and on which I have appeared several different times before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, dealing with the important problem of electoral college reform.

My main theme in this whole connection, Mr. Chairman, can be stated in the first short paragraph of my report, that is that I believe, and I hope you believe, and think you believe, that every voter in this country, whether he lives in California, Delaware, New York, or South Dakota, ought to have equal voting power when it comes to electing the President of the United States.

This is the only important respect in which our electoral college system, so-called, has failed to function with fairness with only minor changes, important though they are, in effect, it has stood the practical test of time since our country was established. It has carried us through 44 presidential elections, through peace and war, from George Washington to John F. Kennedy. It was after the fourth presidential election that the 12th amendment was added to the Constitution to require presidential electors to vote specifically for President and Vice President, rather than, as the original provision provided, for two persons for President. Since then, 40 presidential elections have been held. It is obvious, therefore, that any system that has functioned so well for so long should not be changed lightly. Changes proposed or made should be the absolute minimum required to bring about the desired and necessary results.

Such minimum and wholly practical changes are proposed in Senate Joint Resolution 12, which I am sponsoring together with Senators Thurmond, McClellan, Hruska, Morton, and Blakley. This is the old Mundt-Coudert amendment, with which most of us are familiar, with an important change, an antigerrymandering provision which corrects a wholly valid criticism of the amendment as written in 1955.

Our Founding Fathers, in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, gave long and careful consideration to the method of electing the President. At first it decided he should be elected by the Congress. Then it changed its collective mind and transferred the power of choice to an electoral college that was to be an exact counterpart of Congress with the representation of the States as units, corresponding to the Senators, as well as population of the States, corresponding to Representatives, and which should meet at the seat of government.

Upon further consideration this plan was dropped because of the fear that the electors wouldn't travel so far for a single purpose. It took days in those times to cover distances that we span in a few hours. The Convention went back to its original idea that a President should be elected by a joint session of Congress. They did this with reluctance because it ran counter to their strong beliefs in the principle that separation of powers of the executive and legislative branches of the new government.

At this point the idea developed that the electors could meet and cast their votes in their own States and transmit the certificates of their ballots to the seat of government.

Accordingly, the work of electing the President was divided. The Convention transferred the act of voting from a joint session of Congress to electoral colleges in the several States, the results to be transmitted to the President of the Senate. It left with Congress, in joint session, the function of counting the certified results from the States, as would have been the case had Congress done the voting.

This plan appears in article II, section 1, of the Constitution-a part of which has been superseded by the 12th amendment:

Each State shall appoint, in such a manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of Electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector.

The exclusion of Members of Congress and Federal officeholders is required by the cardinal principle of separation of powers.

In Senate Joint Resolution 12, the clause, "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct," is eliminated. In its stead, Senate Joint Resolution 12 requires:

The electors to which a State is entitled by virtue of its Senators, shall be elected by the people thereof, and the electors to which it is entitled by virtue of its Representatives shall be elected by the people within single elector districts established by the legislature thereof; such districts to be composed of compact and contiguous territory containing, as nearly as practicable, the number of persons which entitled the State to one Representative in the Congress; and such districts, when formed, shall not be altered until another census has been taken.

It is the clause, "In such manner as the legislature thereof may direct," that is the root of the present problem. Only 10 States participated in the election of our first President, George Washington. North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution; and New York's two houses of the legislature could not agree on who the electors should be.

No uniform method of choosing electors was followed. Electors were chosen in a variety of ways: election by legislatures, election by the people in districts, and election by the people on a general ticket which means that each voter in the State could vote for every one of the State's electors. In Massachusetts, each of the eight districts chose two electors from which the legislature selected one per district and added two electors at large.

In the succeeding presidential elections through 1832, the various methods were used with States changing from one to the other. In 1836, the general ticket system was used in every State but South Carolina, which continued to elect by the legislature through 1860. After Washington's two elections, the Presidency was contested every 4 years on a party basis as it is today. The majority party in each State was quick to see the advantage of consolidating its electoral strength either through legislature selection or through use of the general ticket system so as to exert maximum influence in electing a President. Federalists did this where they were in control, in the New England States for example, and the anti-Federalists, later Jefferson's Republicans, did the same thing in their States.

Since 1836, with the exception of South Carolina, there have been only three instances of departures from the general ticket system, the one we now employ. They were Florida in 1868 and Colorado in 1876, in which the elections were by the legislature, and Michigan in 1892, when the district system with two electors at large was used. It is extremely doubtful if any voter living today has used anything but a general ticket system in presidential elections. This use of the general ticket system in every State is largely responsible for many of the misunderstandings of the electoral college system which

exist today and for much of the notion that the electors are archaic and unnecessary.

When we regard the electoral college as the exact numerical counterpart of Congress we can see readily that it combines the two principles of representation in our Federal Union of States. We have the federal principle of equal representation of the States in the Senate, regardless of population, and, then, we have the national principle of unequal representation of the States in the House of Representatives based on their unequal populations. State representation in the House in the present Congress ranges from 1 to 43.

Each citizen of each State is represented in the Senate by two Senators and in the House of Representatives by one Representative, with a few exceptions. His representation in Congress, therefore, is two parts federal and one part national. In the electoral college, with the general ticket system in force in every State, there is no equality of citizen representation. It ranges from a high of 45 members of the electoral college for a citizen of New York-which the preceding witness and my good friend, Senator Keating, represents so well-to 3 for a citizen of each of the 6 States that sent only 1 Representative to the present Congress.

Conversely, each citizen has as many votes in presidential elections as his State has members in the electoral college, because they are elected on a general ticket. In other words, when a New York voter pulls a voting machine lever for a presidential ticket, he is actually casting 45 votes, 1 for each of 45 electors on a party slate.

Senator KEATING. Forty-three, now.

Senator MUNDT. Forty-five-forty-three members of the House and two of the Senate.

It may be hard to believe this is a startling statistic I want this committee to reflect on-it may be hard to believe, but there are or were actually more than 325 million votes cast in New York in the last presidential election by something over 7 million voters.

On the other hand, the citizens of the six States which have only one Member of the House of Representatives had only three votes each in the presidential election. In my own State of South Dakota, each citizen had four votes.

This tremendous disparity in voting weight between the citizens of the large States and the small States is the true source of all the valid complaints which have been made against the electoral college system. The real culprit is the use of the general ticket by every State. Of course, each State legislature could abandon the general ticket, but none will without certain knowledge that all other States will abandon it at the same time. This is why a consitutional amendment is necessary to bring about a change.

I might add that the State of Florida in the last session of the legislature considered very seriously by State action eliminating the general ticket system, and on wise reflection decided they would be penalizing only themselves if they did, and every other State continued the bloc system of voting, the winner-take-all general ticket system.

Mr. Chairman, there is no more justification for choosing electors on a general ticket than there is for electing a State's delegation to the House of Representatives, counterparts of electors, on a statewide, bloc basis, which is what the general ticket does. Imagine the howls