Winners Wanted

Even though two weeks have passed since the elections, Alaska and Georgia still do not know who their new Governors will be.

Alaska will probably be first to resolve its gubernatorial contest, which became a guessing game when Democratic Governor William Egan 1) conceded the election, thinking that he had lost by at least 2,500 votes to Republican Walter Hickel, 2) de-conceded after Hickel's lead shrank, but 3) refused to re-concede when the final unofficial count gave Hickel a margin of 887 votes. At week's end the first official canvass of returns was incomplete and the inevitable recount not yet begun. Election authorities hoped to finish by Dec. 1.

Dixie Dozen. In Georgia, the hangup was a matter of old math--Southern style. With 451,032 votes, Republican Congressman Howard Call away had an undisputed lead over Democrat Lester Maddox, who had 448,598. But Democrat Ellis Arnall, a former Governor and the contest's only racial moderate, got 57,832 write-in votes and, under an amendment adopted in 1824, Georgia's constitution requires that a gubernatorial candidate must win more than 50% of the popular vote in order to be elected. If no contender wins an absolute majority, according to the constitution, it is up to the state legislature to award the governorship to one of the two top candidates. There was little doubt that the Democratic majority of legislators would pick Lester Maddox, the onetime restaurateur who in 1964 dispensed ax handles to whites rather than serve chicken legs to Negroes.

The deadlock stirred a Dixie-dozen legal reactions. The state attorney general petitioned Atlanta's federal district court to uphold the legislature's right to name the Governor. The American Civil Liberties Union filed two suits in the same court to void the anachronistic constitutional provision and order a new election. Callaway supporters asked the court to order a runoff between Callaway and Maddox, with write-ins barred. Yet another petition, brought by pro-Arnall forces, sought to permit write-ins.

Waxing W.I.G. The federal court's first move last week was to disallow the legislature's right to select the Governor. The special three-judge panel followed the U.S. Supreme Court's one-man, one-vote declaration of 1962 and its 1963 decision overturning Georgia's county-unit system of voting. State Attorney General Arthur Bolton thereupon announced that he would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Acting with unprecedented speed, the Supreme Court, even before it received formal notice of the appeal, set Nov. 30 as the date to hear arguments.

The most likely outcome is that Georgia will be compelled to hold a new popular election in the next few months. Even this might not settle anything, because the pro-Arnall faction, called Write In Georgia (W.I.G.), is growing in strength. Democratic Representative Charles Weltner, who chose not to run for re-election because he could not stomach Maddox, warned: "We could go on forever with write-ins. We might not have a Governor for four years." Meanwhile, able Incumbent Carl Sanders, 41, who cannot succeed himself, will stay on in the statehouse.

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