slow in functioning and difficult to implement. Therefore, as we suggested when we testified 2 years ago, we believe that the Congress, which has the authority-and the expertise-to do so, consider writing a statute which would assure uniform and prompt count and recount procedures in each State.

Those who wish to retain the electoral college system say that it has served us well for 200 years. We have already heard "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." While this argument might have a nice basic appeal, it has little other value. The system has failed. Three times-in 1824, 1876, and 1888-the electoral college produced Presidents who were not the popular vote winners. That these occurrences did not result in a constitutional crisis was a fortunate result of the slower communications of that time. If the system were to fail again in 1980, when public opinion polls consistently report the decline of the American people's confidence in their institutions of government, we would risk a constitutional crisis of the first magnitude.

The electoral college system itself has changed. It was never intended for bloc-committed voting by unknown electors. It was intended for deliberative choices by well-known, respected persons who could both nominate and elect the President and Vice President. Since such functions for electors no longer prevail, the system is no longer relevant. It is, in fact, dangerous. It is an impediment to the will of the people.

The League of Women Voters of the United States commends you, Mr. Chairman, for your continued leadership on Presidential election reform. We hope that the 96th Congress will be credited with initiating this historic change.

As we have said consistently, and as we were quoted earlier today, the bottom line is whether or not we are willing to remove the final obstacle to the fulfillment of the principle of one person, one vote through the direct popular election of the President and Vice President. We must be. The American people are ready for direct democracy in the election of their President.

Thank you.

Senator BAYH. Thank you very much, Ms. Neuman. I must say you did a skilled job of deflating the expanded apprehensions that have been developed over this afternoon's testimony about what would happen if we dared to let the people select our President.

I don't have any questions. I just want to thank you for your patience, and I want to pay tribute to the league for their persistence, as well as the democratic process which leads them to espouse the position.

I don't know of an organization that goes through a more burdensome task of really-I say this complimentarily-a more burdensome procedure to make certain that their members do not become associated with a position until they have had a chance to have a say or to listen.

And that was the process that was followed, and certainly it was not the casual kind of response that we heard criticized relative to the poll results.

MS. NEUMAN. It took 2 years to get the position.

Senator BAYH. Thank you very much. Senator Thurmond?

Senator THURMOND. I believe you quoted Douglas Baily to the effect that the only function that the electoral college can serve is to impose a constitutional crisis upon the country.

This is a rather harsh statement, is it not, for a system under which this country has developed for two centuries. Is there absolutely no reasonable case that can be made for the preservation of the electoral college?

I always thought that the league was a group that tried to look at both sides of an issue. Because of that reputation, they were entrusted, as I recall, with the responsibility for administering the 1976 Presidential election debates. Yet you can say that the only function served by the electoral college is to impose a constitutional crisis upon the country.

Would you please elaborate a little on that?

Ms. NEUMAN. Yes; first of all, we did, as I just mentioned, study the pros and cons of the electoral college. Our study was adopted by our members after the 1968 Presidential election.

Every single member who participated in discussing the electoral college at the local level had the opportunity to see both sides. The questions that are used in league meetings are deliberately written to be objective so that hopefully no prior opinion is injected into them.

And this is why ordinary people out there think that the electoral college is no longer a useful part of our machinery. The quote here is from Doug Baily. I think that the electoral college doesn't really serve our purposes anymore, and perhaps part of the problem-just to give you an example, when I go to high schools and talk to civics classes and try to encourage those young people to register to vote when they turn 18-and I do fine on "Your vote makes a difference," until I get to how we elect our President. And that is a very sticky issue, and it is very difficult to convince anybody who is a potential voter that they really can make a difference when they vote for President.

I also think we should remember that when the electoral college was set up, the franchise was not extended to blacks or women. Our whole democracy has changed in terms of the numbers and kinds of people who can participate in it. It was set up by a small group of individuals who were thinking about a rather elitist way of electing a President. We have a much more democratic nation today, and I hope we can continue to move in the direction of trying to implement the principles that we believe that this country stands for.

Senator THURMOND. Thank you.

Senator BAYH. Thank you very much. I appreciate your presence and the assistance of the league.

Mr. Feerick?

TESTIMONY OF JOHN D. FEERICK, CHAIRMAN, SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON ELECTION REFORM, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

Mr. FEERICK. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is John Feerick. I am a practicing lawyer in New York and currently serve as chairman of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Election Reform.

With the Chairman's and committee's permission, I would like to include in the record of these hearings my 18-page statement and the attachments to that statement. In the interests of expedition, I will cover some of the highlight points that I would like to make and then respond to any questions the committee might have of

me.

Senator BAYH. We will put the entire statement in the record if there are no objections.

Mr. FEERICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am grateful for the privilege of appearing before this committee to express the views of the American Bar Association on the issue of reform of our system of electing a President.

The views of our Association, of course, are very well known to this committee. We believe that the Electoral College system should be abolished and should be replaced by a system of direct nationwide popular vote.

We were honored on a number of occasions in the past to appear before this committee to express those views.

As the committee knows, the position of the American Bar Association was established after long and thorough study by a Commission on Electoral College Reform. In 1966 the American Bar Association established a special commission of 15 persons representing various walks of life, professions, and sections of the country.

I would just like to read into the record the names of some of the members of that commission. The chairman was Robert G. Storey of Texas, a past president of the association. Governor, and now Senator, Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma was a member, as were Prof. Paul Freund of Harvard Law School, labor leader Walter P. Reuther; a former president of Howard University, James M. Nabrit, Jr.; a former president of the American Political Science Association, C. Herman Pritchett; and former Members of the CongressEd Gosset of Texas and Kenneth B. Keating of New York. There were others of similar distinction who served on the ABA electoral college commission.

Having had the privilege to be a member of the staff to that commission, I can report firsthand that at the outset of the deliberations of the commission, every point of view was reflected in terms of the electoral college system and alternative proposals.

At the conclusion of the deliberations of that commission in 1967, the commission was unanimous that substantial reform of our system should take place. The members of the commission were in substantial agreement that that reform should be a system of direct popular election.

The recommendations of the American Bar Association commission came before the house of delegates, the governing body of the American Bar Association, in February of 1967. That body consisted of more than 500 lawyers and judges representing every State, every part of every State in the country. And after the recommendations were debated before the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association, the recommendations of the electoral college commission were adopted as the position of the association.

Those recommendations were reviewed again in 1974 and with equal enthusiasm the association reaffirmed the position in support of the system of direct popular election.

My statement sets forth, as best I can, the various arguments for a system of direct popular election. It also endeavors to respond to many of the objections that have been raised with reference to a system of direct popular election.

I would just like, before responding to any questions the committee might have, to deal with some of the points that have been made by previous speakers.

I think we have forgotten, perhaps too quickly, the Presidential elections of 1968 and 1976. I can remember firsthand in 1968 from many talks that I had the privilege to give at that time before various groups on the subject a great deal of concern about the possibility that the popular vote winner might not be the electoral vote winner. In fact, many members of both parties announced at the time that were we to have a situation where the electoral vote winner might be the popular vote loser, it might become necessary for them in the electoral college to cast their votes for the popular vote winner.

There was a great deal of confusion out there at that time concerning the electoral college system.

I dare say that if we had had a situation where the election was to turn on the 45 electoral votes that had gone to George Wallace, there would have been a great deal of clamor for reform of the system. We might have had a President of the United States who would have had considerable difficulty governing because of serious questions concerning the legitimacy of his administration as a result of the functioning of the electoral college in that election. The question has been raised as to constitutional crisis. The way I look at it is that an election should reflect the will of the people. It seems to me hard to defend a system under which the will of the people, as reflected in the popular vote, might be rejected.

A body of this distinguished Congress in 1940 had this comment about such a situation. It said:

The only legitimate object of an election is to accomplish the will of the people. If we permit a system to prevail that thwarts that will, we trifle with one of the most serious purposes of Government. When that may happen, we needlessly test the serenity and security of our Government. We plant hate, discord, and distrust where we could have nationwide concurrence and the good will acceptance of the just verdict of the American people.

I have several comments concerning the differences between the Office of the Presidency and that of U.S. Senator.

As I look at how we vote for our Senators, when it comes to all of those in the constituency of a particular State, we all have an equal vote; nobody has a greater vote than anybody else.

As I look at the Office of the Presidency, I see it as a national office; I see the President as a spokesman for all the people. And yet we tolerate a system under which the votes of some people have greater weight than others, and the votes of some people are completely canceled out at an intermediate level. I find that indefensible.

There have been suggestions made that were we to abolish the electoral college we would do violence to a great compromise that

was made at the Constitutional Convention. I don't agree with that.

In my statement I have tried, as best I can, to describe, as I saw it from reading those debates, what the framers did with respect to the electoral college. I think it bears repeating that they developed a scheme, a constitutional scheme, which was to have the best citizens in the various States meet in the separate States and decide who should be President and Vice President. The electors were to act independently, take into account people, the views of the people, but not to be bound by those views-to act with a degree of independence and detachment.

Well, as we know, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, that scheme never came to pass. So I would suggest that the abolition of the electoral college does not do violence to any great principle of federalism. On the contrary, I would suggest that the abolition of the electoral college would strengthen our Federal System, because the vote of every person in every State, regardless of group, would be equally important to the Presidential candidates. No longer would States be disregarded in terms of political campaigning because it was either a sure State or a definite lost type of State-but every State, every voter, would be of great importance to our Presidential candidates.

I would suggest that a system that gives that type of voting incentive to our Presidential candidates is a system to be desired. Second, there has been a suggestion that if we were to go to a system of direct election, somehow we would be doing a great deal of injustice to our two-party system. I have had the privilege to spend in the past 2 years as chairman of the ABA's special election reform committee a considerable amount of time on the subject of the disappearance of the American voter, and the lack of attachment on the part of the American voters with reference to our existing party system. I think it's essential that we have a system that encourages voting participation, that gives equal weight to every vote. And I would suggest that a system of direct election has a very good chance of helping considerably our two-party system. The ABA commission spent a considerable amount of time focusing on the question of two parties. The committee concluded from its own study of the subject that a pillar of our system that supports the two-party system is election to a single office by plurality voting. That principle is incorporated, Mr. Chairman, in your direct election proposal.

So as we see it your proposal would perfect and extend that feature that buttresses our two-party system.

In closing, I would also like to make reference to some of the earlier statements about giving up an advantage. We in the American Bar Association have no vested legal interest in this subject as we might in proposed legislation affecting lawyers that would come before a committee of Congress.

We approached this issue from the standpoint of the American citizen, not from the standpoint of preserving advantage to any group. And as we see it, from the standpoint of the American citizen, when it comes to the election of the President of the United States, no longer can there be any justification for a system that counts votes unequally depending on place of residence.