is to do away with that power of Congress to elect a President, we feel that this little loophole should be eliminated, also.

Senator BAYH. You should have a special election called, then? Conceivably a third election?

Mr. BIRKETT. Conceivably.

If people were getting (a) picked off and (b), if they were not doing well in the popular vote, this could happen.

We also think the amendment should clearly authorize Congress to provide for the case of the death or withdrawal of one of the two leading presidential candidates after the regular election but before the runoff election. The draftsmanship there seems to limit the power of the Congress to provide for the case of death or withdrawal, private election provided for in section 1. In other words, the runoff provisions are in section 2. It seemed to us to be desirable, too, across the board.

I think these are the main points we wanted to make. We also did note that I am almost embarassed to make the point, but we make it a footnote in our report, and that is that conceivably there could be a tie vote and if perhaps provision might in some parenthetical way, which I have not figured out, could be made to provide for that contingency for providing for a new election in such a case. Senator BAYH. Maybe we need it.

Mr. BIRKETT. Maybe you need it.

Senator BAYH. We should shape up that wording a bit.

Mr. BIRKETT. Yes. These are our major thoughts on the matter. We are strongly in favor of the proposed amendment and, for the first time, optimistic that it may come to pass.

Senator BAYH. Could you for the record give us a brief synopsis of the position of the New York City bar and the New York State bar organization pattern? What percentage of the membership in the New York State bar is comprised or composed of New York City bar? Mr. BIRKETT. I think the answer to your question is, "No, I could not," because I do not know.

Senator BAYH. How do you arrive at your decision? I think it is fair to say that the significant percentage of the lawyers in the State of New York actually do practice and are members of your city bar. Mr. BIRKETT. This is certainly true, and the New York State Bar Association annual meetings are always held in the New York area for that very reason.

Senator BAYH. Not quite like the ratio in my hometown of Terre Haute compared to the Indiana State bar?

Mr. BIRKETT. Not quite.

I should add, and I meant to add for the record, that at the annual meeting of the association of the bar a resolution was adopted on behalf of the entire association approving the principle of direct popular election of the President. That is, at our meeting held on May 16 this year.

Senator BAYH. Was it close or about tied?

Mr. BIRKETT. There was no tally. It was a voice vote. The hour was extremely late and there was some opposition which seemed to be principally devoted to that fact. Generally, I think that———

Senator BAYH. Excuse me, due to the fact that the hour was late, was that the reason they were against it?

Mr. BIRKETT. Yes, odd as that may sound.

Senator BAYH. That sounds almost as good as some of the other reasons for opposing it.

Mr. BIRKETT. Well, it happens even in the association of the bar. Senator BAYH. Could I ask you a couple of other quick questionsMr. BIRKETT. Certainly.

Senator BAYH. I know that your association has done a lot of study and has been helpful in making some sugestions as to draftsmanship and trying to polish up some of the rough corners. As I have said repeatedly, the chairman of the committee, and I trust the whole committee in matters of this importance, will not wait on any specific language or wording. If that were the case there would be no reason for hearings. We want to bring as much expertise to bear on the language, as well as the philosophy, as possible.

Given one of the major States of our Nation, there has been a controversy raging, or at least fully disclosed before this committee, about the conflict between the small States and the large States. Quite frankly, as I view it, we are not going to get this ratified if we divided it either way; that is, all the small States for us, or all the small States against us. If we get all the small States for us we are still going to have a large enough group in opposition that we will not be able to get it passed at the State legislative level. Did the association give any thought to the method of ratification? The distinguished ranking minority member of this committee, Senator Dirksen, has proposed a ratification by State convention. Now, this has been discussed with increased frequency during this round of hearings. Did your committee give any thought to what impact one form of ratification or the other would have in major metropolitan area States?

Mr. BIRKETT. No, we did not. We did consider the question of whether or not there would be this kind of small State versus large State polarization and we pretty well concluded in part on the report of the American Bar Association, and in part based upon some of the discussion within our committee, that it was not at all clear as to who would come out ahead under which system and why.

Senator BAYH. Unless it were the people.

Mr. BIRKETT. Unless it were the people, right. If that happy result should follow there was no one in the committee who would raise his hand against it. Now, I am not even sure I do not think I could react off the cuff and be helpful at all as to what method of ratification would be best.

Senator BAYH. Well, I just wondered if you had discussed that.

One other thought that is in the realm of technicalities. Did the committee give any attention to the need or the importance of the establishment of national voting standards? When you get into the area of promulgating a set of national election laws for the President of the United States you immediately run afoul of a strong feeling that many of our colleagues have, particularly in this body, that this is a State right. We have tried to approach this in as moderate a manner as possible. Perhaps we have gone a half a sentence farther than some people would like by giving Congress the power if it sees fit, at a later date, to move in the area of age and voting residency requirements.

Mr. BIRKETT. Now, we viewed with approval that half sentence, thought it was about the right way to handle the problem. That is

to say, in the first instance it was something that there was a strong feeling, not of the committee, but among many, that it was a matter that had better be left to the States. On the other hand, that there ought to be a power in Congress to override, if it became necessary, because of inequity or inequality of some sort in the State requirements, and age and residency seemed to be the most obvious instances of a place where Congress might wish to establish uniformity. We added a half sentence ourselves in our report, a parenthetical-saying, "although perhaps the power of Congress to adopt uniform qualifications for voting should not be restricted to age and residence." I hope you will not ask me what else I have in mind, because I do not have anything else in mind at the moment except that Congress should restrict itself by this means to think up something else later on.

Senator BAYH. Our feeling was that by tying the qualifications to the qualifications of Congressmen, we thereby, in most States, tied it to the qualifications for the most populous house of the State legislature.

Mr. BIRKETT. Right.

Senator BAYH. Any State legislator that is trying to play the game of power politics to get a larger voice for their State by increasing the number of voters would also be perhaps jeopardizing its own position. They might look long and hard before doing something like that. Mr. BIRKETT. Yes, I think that is a good analysis.

Senator BAYH. Thank you very much. We certainly appreciate your taking the time; I hope we can call on the New York City bar for their expertise. I hope you will feel free to advise us if you have any other thoughts on it.

Mr. BIRKETT. Thank you, sir.

Senator BAYH. The next witness this morning is Dr. Herbert Alexander, the director of the Citizens Research Foundation. He has written extensively on matters relating to politics and offered several books on financing elections. He is currently the consultant to the House Administration Committee on Election Reform Legislation. He is the director of political science and is on the faculty at Princeton University. We are pleased to have you with us, Dr. Alexander, and I hope you can advise us in the area of financing elections. I am sure that there are 535 Members of Congress who are very concerned about this matter.

STATEMENT OF DR. HERBERT ALEXANDER, DIRECTOR, CITIZENS RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Mr. ALEXANDER. Particularly the Senate this session, Senator. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I am happy to discuss some of the implications of changed methods of electing our President. I speak for myself, not for the Citizens Research Foundation, of which I am director.

My expertise relates to political finance in its various aspects-fund raising, campaign costs, regulations and I don't pretend to have any special knowledge of methods of electing the President. However, as a political scientist, I am aware of inequities in the electoral college. I advocate change to a system of direct election, and hope to explore with you its meaning in terms of the financing of presidential elections, on which I have written.

I regret that I did not have adequate time to prepare extended testimony, but with your permission, I should be happy to try to respond to any questions concerning implications of direct election of the President, as they relate to the financing of presidential campaigns.

Senator BAYH. Very fine. Why do we not just conduct a colloquy here of questions and answers because I would like to get your thinking inasmuch as you know a great deal and have had a great amount of experience in this area. We in the Senate have given a considerable amount of time to exploring financing of presidential campaigns. I would like to explore your thoughts on closely related questions, some of which I posed to our previous witness, Dr. Birkett. The controversy rages over who would be the beneficiary of a change such as this. I injected that perhaps only the people. Some of our witnesses, indeed, one or two of my colleagues have suggested that this is an act of practical futility because of the fact that there are about 32 or so States that would lose the weighted advantage they now have to win an election with the direct election system. How would you feel that a party would apply its votes and its financial resources in order to win? Under the electoral college it seems like an almost total effort to capture the dozen large States plus that block of States in which the candidate might have a unique advantage. Changing the weighted system, how do you feel that a party would apply its resources?

Mr. ALEXANDER. My view is that the direct election of the President would not greatly affect the character or strategy of tactics or application of resources with respect to presidential elections. I think basically that the reason is today strategy and tactics are nationwide in character. The campaign is directed toward reaching concentrations of populations or special groups that are thought to be inclined toward a particular candidate. Many presidential candidates, most presidential candidates, try to reach a large proportion of the States regardless of the number of votes that they think they may be able to capture in those States. The result is that I am not convinced that there would be much substantial change with respect to manner of campaigning. The effort would still be directed in large part toward the large States because that is where the largest population concentrations are, and that is where some of the economics, socioeconomic groupings are-which the candidates are trying to reach, so that to the extent that there is change, the change might be toward more emphasis on broadcasting, on political broadcasting over the networks in order to reach votes everywhere. But, I can cite an example that direct election of the President might affect. For example, in 1964 in the presidential election, Senator Goldwater in the last week or two of the election when it became pretty obvious that he would not capture votes in many of the Northern and Eastern States, began to direct his campaign toward the South and toward certain specific States in which he thought there was more chance of gathering some popular votes and some electoral votes. The result was that at one point a national telethon which had been scheduled by the Republican campaign was scrapped in favor of southern regional broadcasts; the effort being to reach certain groups that the strategists thought were more inclined toward that particular candidate. Now, some of that may be affected by the direct election. The truth is that

several broadcasts to reach a southern audience are less expensive than nationwide television broadcasts or telethons would be.

Nevertheless, even with respect to broadcasting and the placement of spot announcements, again the effort is to reach those elements of the population that might be more inclined toward your candidacy and the result is you still would tend to place the similar numbers of announcements in those States where you thought you could capture more votes.

Now, there is one other aspect of campaigning that I might talk about for a moment. That is with respect to registration and get out the vote activities. There I think there might be renewed and greater effort to register, recruit nonvoters and to get them to the polls because a vote anywhere will count more than it might under the present system.

Senator BAYH. Would this apply only to registration and getting out the vote? For example, now, although I think you are absolutely correct, you cannot ignore the big States. First of all, many of them are close enough politically that you cannot take them with any degree of certainty. Second, there are a lot of people there and you cannot let them go by default, even if it appears you have a wide margin there. But, would there not be, in a direct election, a tendency to say, "All right, there are only 500,000 voters in one State, but if I apply x number of dollars there I have chance of picking up a greater number of votes. I can pick up 100,000 extra votes in this area even though it is a smaller State that I might normallly pass by under the present system." I would invest my resources there instead of going to one of the other larger metropolitan areas.

Now, do you have any experience in this area?

Mr. ALEXANDER. No, I think to some extent that would happen, and all I am trying to suggest is that overall, looking at the picture nationwide, I do not think there are so many pockets of voters in so many places who are not being reached now. Now, the purpose of a campaign is in part to activate voters, that is, you know, those who are already registered and eligible to vote. The purpose of a campaign is to activate them and to crystallize their opinions for a given candidate. Now, to that extent, campaigning might turn toward the pocket of 100,000 voters that might be captured in some smaller State. But basically, these people are being reached in any case in a nationwide campaign today, and some more intensive effort might go into it, but I think on balance there would not be substantial differences over what we have today.

To the extent that national broadcasts are the number of national broadcasts are increased to the extent that more intensive campaigning does take place in certain regions or States in the country through spot announcements, through travel of Presidential candidates, certainly campaign costs could be increased. But, these are almost byproducts of the direct election of the President, and there are some advantages, you know, in getting more people registered and getting more people activated and getting more people to participate in politics, and getting them to vote, so that it is all to the good if this does happen.

Senator BAYH. You think it might?