the great State of New York, he received 2,997,586 votes, considerably more than he had received in the aforesaid 10 States, yet he received no electoral votes for the nearly 3 million people who voted in the State of New York. In fact, you had about 3 million Republican votes counted for Mr. Roosevelt. Out of 47 million popular votes, President Roosevelt received 3 million more than did Governor Dewey, yet he received 432 electoral votes to the Governor's 99. With 54 percent of the popular vote, Mr. Roosevelt received 81 percent of the electoral vote. Now, in line with the one-voter, one-vote philosophy, let me just make a few brief quotes here. Back in 1915 Mr. Justice Holmes in the case of U.S. v. Mosely, 238 U.S. 383, said: We regard it as equally unquestionable that the right to have one's vote counted is as open to protection by the Congress as the right to put a ballot in the box. Under the electoral college system, if you vote with a minority in your State you have your vote counted contrary to the way in which you cast it. In Gray v. Sanders, 369 U.S. 368 at page 381, that is the case in which the Supreme Court outlawed the unit system in Georgia, the Court states: The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing-one voter, one vote. In Reynolds v. Sims, 378 U.S. 533, Chief Justice Warren, speaking through the Court, declares: The right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen's vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise. And the Court further states: Weighing votes differently according to where citizens happen to reside is discriminatory. I might point out that the electoral college is shot through and through with all these things which the courts say are obnoxious to the American way of life. These decisions from which opinions are quoted here, as you gentlemen know, aim generally at the malapportionment of voting districts in the several States. We submit that the electoral college is far more vicious and odious than any of the evils with which the recent acts of Congress have sought to deal or with which the Court decisions have sought to deal. However, the Supreme Court has condemned the electoral college. The question has not been before the Court in very many instances, incidentally, but the late Associate Justice Jackson in the case of Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214, stated, that was the case involving the right of an elector who switched his vote. He came up from Alabama. The demise of the whole electoral system would not impress me as a disaster. At its best it is a mystifying and distorting factor in presidential elections which may resolve a popular defeat into an electoral victory. At its worst it is open to local corruption and manipulation. To abolish it and substitute direct election of the President, so that every vote wherever cast would have equal weight in calculating the results, would seem to me a gain for simplicity and integrity of our governmental processes. Now, let me get down to just a few specifics. It seems to me that the proportional system, as heretofore passed by the Senate, is by all odds the most simple, fair, and accurate of the several proposals before this honorable committee. It does not weight the scales in any way. It treats everybody exactly alike. I am sure all of you gentlemen remember the fact that the great Senator Estes Kefauver, with whom it was my privilege to serve on the House Judiciary Committee, strongly favored the proportional system which I like to refer to as the Lodge-Gossett amendment sponsored by Senator Kefauver and then by Senator Daniels and, I believe, this amendment now is sponsored by Senator Sparkman and others. Incidentally, Senator Kefauver conducted a poll among political scientists and educators. To his inquiries he received 254 replies. Out of these 254 replies, 230 favored reform of some type and only 24 opposed reform. 7110 percent favored abolishing the office of elector but at the same time 60710 percent favored retaining the present electoral vote strength of the States. So far as specific proposals went, 4610 percent favored the proportional system. Comparatively few favored direct popular elections, doubtless because the direct popular elections would have the effect of ultimately destroying the States as far as elections go. Numerous other polls have been taken for the last 20 years, primarily by Mr. Gallup. They all show a vast majority of the people favor electoral reform. In the last 20 years hundreds of amendments have been proposed in both the House and the Senate. The majority of these would enact either the district sysem or the proportional sysem. By way of conclusion I want to go on record as saying I am very much opposed to the plan suggested by the President because I think it would freeze all present inequities of the present time and would violate the one-voter, one-vote philosophy. I am also opposed to the straight popular vote proposal because it would erase, to a large extent, State lines and result primarily to volume voting. It seems imperative to me that something must be done in the premises. I would respectfully suggest that either the district system or the proportional system, preferably the proportional sysem, would go a long way toward curing the evils of which the present system is fraught. Let me call your attention to the fact that we are always scoffing at elections in Communist or totalitarian countries where you say they do not have any choice. You have only one candidate and everybody votes for one candidate. Yet we do the very same thing in every State of the Union in every presidential election. We submit that the electoral college, Mr. Chairman, is both dishonest and dangerous. Thank you. Senator BAYH. Thank you very much, Mr. Gossett, you certainly have spent a great deal of time on this. May I ask you a question or two? Mr. GOSSETT. Certainly, sir. I do not pose as any authority, but I will. Senator BAYH. Certainly you have given a good portion of your life to the study of this problem. I notice that you said that the popular vote system would ultimately destroy the States. Mr. GOSSETT. If you had the popular vote system you would obviously have to have a Federal franchise, Federal control of elections. You would have each State, otherwise it would just be a matter of piling up volume voting and, for instance, if Georgia has 18-year-old voting age, to be on a parity with Georgia other States would have to lower their voting age to 18, of course, the Constitution has provided that voters in presidential elections shall have the same qualifications as voters that vote in the numerous branches of the State legislatures. Now voting up until recent years has been primarily a matter of State control and the whole election machinery has been State oriented. If you had a straight popular vote I think it would be obvious that Congress would have to set up all the voting standards. Senator BAYH. We had an interesting philosophy expressed by one of the witnesses yesterday. He noted the viewing of a contrary philosophy which I think has been pretty well promulgated in Congress. That is the view that the small States would be the ones that would be most likely to oppose the popular referendum type of election. This gentleman pointed out with a considerable amount of effect that, while the small States now have the weighted vote in the electoral college itself, the larger States have a greater influence in the choice of candidates and that these would tend to offset one another. Do you have any thought on that? Mr. GOSSETT. The small States do have the weighted advantage that comes from the two Senators, the two votes picked out from the two Senators. That is the big State and small State compromise. I suspect that there is something to the point that the gentleman made that the small States would be opposed to the direct popular vote. Senator BAYH. I appreciate very much the arguments you presented concerning the disenfranchisement and the effort Congress has made recently to insure the quality of voting. But how does this fit in with the fact, which you just cannot ignore, that the voters in the small States choose a proportionately larger number of electors as compared with their population than larger States do compared with their population? That is, of course, because they have the two Senators, which gives them three electoral votes and although population only permits them one? I am aware of this small, large-State compromise, but, if we are basing an argument on equality of voting here, how do you get around that? Mr. GOSSETT. You cannot get around it. What we are proposing here does not do away with all of the evils of disproportionment voting, but it minimizes it. You would still have some disparity depending on the number of people who voted in a particular area and the difference between small States and large States. I do not think there is any absolute unquestionable solution to the problem. Senator BAYH. Some witnesses have put statistical evidence in the record pointing out the number of times the Lodge-Gossett system would have resulted in a minority President being elected. I believe the most recent case was in 1960. Mr. GOSSETT. You know, that is purely speculative. It is like asking how a game would come out if you played it under different rules. You would not play the game that way. It is an interesting exercise in political theory. The record, I presume, has those charts from time to time how the election would have come out if you voted the same way but counted it differently. You would not play the game that way. Under the present system there has been a great temptation, for example, to pick your candidates from a big pivotal State. Most of them come from the-in the last 50 years have been from New York or Ohio because they are big pivotal States and now California becomes a big pivotal State. You probably would choose different candidates but for the swing of the vote of the big State. Senator BAYH. Thank you, very much, sir. I do not think there is any need to belabor you any longer. You have been very kind to let us have the results of your study. We are glad to have it in the record. Mr. GOSSETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Senator BAYH. We certainly appreciate your giving us the benefit of all your work in this area. Mr. GOSSETT. Well, lots of luck to the subcommittee. I sympathize with your problem. Senator BAYH. As you know, we can use all the luck we can get. Senator BAYH. Our next witness will be Mr. Neal R. Peirce, who is the political editor of the Congressional Quarterly. Mr. Peirce, it is good to have you with us. STATEMENT OF NEAL R. PEIRCE, POLITICAL EDITOR, CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY Mr. PEIRCE. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. · Senator BAYH. We appreciate all the work you have done on this subject. Mr. PEIRCE. Thank you. I have two parts to my testimony. One part is a factual review of legislative action in the national debate on the electoral college in the postwar period which your counsel suggested would be interesting for the record of the committee. There are copies available here today, and I think that since most of this material has been referred to in one form or the other in the hearings to date, though perhaps not in orderly progression, that this material might be referred for inclusion in the record rather than having me cover it word for word at this point. Senator BAYH. That is fine. We will have it put in and let counsel go over it. (The material referred to follows:) The Electoral College Background The method of selecting a President was the subject of long debate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Several plans were proposed and rejected before a compromise solution, which was modified only slightly in future years, was adopted. Facing the Convention when it convened May 25 was the question of whether the Chief Executive should be chosen by direct popular election, by the Congress, by state legislatures or by intermediate electors. Direct election was opposed because it was generally felt that the people lacked sufficient knowledge of the character and qualifications of possible candidates to make an intelligent choice. Many delegates also feared that the people of the various states would be unlikely to agree on a single person, usually casting their votes for favorite-son candidates well-known to them. Southerners opposed direct election for the additional reason that suffrage was more widespread in the North than in the South, where Negro slaves did not vote. The possibility of giving Congress the power to pick the President also received consideration. However, this plan also was rejected, largely because of fear that it would jeopardize the principle of Executive independence. Similarly, a plan favored by many delegates, to let state legislatures choose the President, was turned down because it was feared that the President might feel so indebted to the states as to allow them to encroach on federal authority. Unable to agree on a plan, the Convention Aug. 31 appointed a "Committee of Eleven" to propose a solution to the problem. The committee Sept. 4 suggested a compromise under which each state would appoint Presidential electors, equal to the total number of its Representatives and Senators. The electors, chosen in a manner set forth by each state legislature, would meet in their own states and cast two votes for President. The votes would be counted in Congress, with the candidate receiving a majority elected President, and the second highest candidate becoming Vice President. This plan constituted a great concession to the less populous states, since they were assured two extra votes (corresponding to their Senators) regardless of how small their populations might be. The plan also left important powers with the states by giving complete discretion to state legislatures to determine the method of choosing electors. Only one provision of the committee's plan aroused serious opposition that giving the Senate the right to decide elections in which no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. Some delegates feared that the Senate, which already had been given treaty ratification powers and the responsibility to "advise and consent" to all important Executive appointments, might become too powerful. Therefore, a counterproposal was made, and accepted, to let the House decide in instances when the electors failed to give a majority of their votes to a single candidate. The interests of the small states were preserved by giving each delegation only one vote in the House on roll calls to elect a President. The system adopted by the Constitutional Convention was a compromise born out of problems involved in differing state voting requirements, the slavery problem, big-v.-small state rivalries and the complexities of the balance of power between different branches of the government. It also was apparently as close to a direct popular election as the men who wrote the Constitution thought possible and appropriate at the time. Some scholars have suggested that the Electoral College, as it came to be called, was a "jerry-rigged improvisation" which really left it to future generations to work out the best form of Presidential election. ONLY once since ratification of the Constitution had an amendment been adopted which substantially altered the method of electing the President. In the 1800 Presidential election, the Republican (anti-Federalist) electors inadvertently caused a tie in the Electoral College by casting equal numbers of votes for Thomas Jefferson, whom they wished to be elected President, and Aaron Burr, whom they wished to elect Vice President. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives and 36 ballots were required before Jefferson was finally elected President. The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, sought to prevent a recurrence of this incident by providing that the electors should vote separately for President and Vice President. Other changes in the system evolved over the years. The authors of the Constitution, for example, had intended that each state should choose its most distinguished citizens as electors and that they would deliberate and vote as individuals in electing the President. But, as strong political parties began to appear, the electors came to be chosen merely as representatives of the parties, and from 1800, independent voting by electors almost disappeared. (From 1820 through 1964, only eight of the 14,554 electoral votes cast were cast contrary to |