Extending the Franchise

Since its passage in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has added 800,000 blacks to voter registration rolls in seven Southern states. In December, following a proposal of the Nixon Administration, the House agreed to weaken the statute by eliminating the Justice Department's right to send in registrars and review voting laws in states covered by the statute. The Senate was determined to maintain the law, but last week it went much further than that. By a surprisingly large vote of 64 to 12, it passed an omnibus voting measure that not only keeps the present strong enforcement measures for the South but also extends the provisions to the North and lowers the voting age nationwide to 18. If enacted, the bill could add well over 10 million new voters to the rolls.

The decision to extend the vote to 18-year-olds caught some Senators by surprise. Developed by Carey Parker, an aide to Senator Edward Kennedy, the proposal seeks to avoid the cumbersome process of constitutional amendment by assuming a congressional right to legislate under the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment. Kennedy considered introducing the measure himself, but dropped the idea when civil rights advocates feared that it would jeopardize the voting rights bill. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield picked up the proposal, offering it as an amendment. "I've been advocating this for a decade, but nothing ever happens," said Mansfield. "I thought this was a way to have the Senate face up to its responsibilities in this area."

Some Southern Senators argued that the Constitution forbids Congress to determine voter qualifications in the individual states. Warning that an adverse ruling by the courts on any congressional reduction of the voting age could upset the results of the 1972 presidential election, Senator James Allen of Alabama tried to delay the amendment's effective date until after 1972. A majority of his colleagues went along with Mansfield's contention that the measure, which would take effect January 1, 1971, allows ample time for a court challenge.

Literacy and Residency. The bill also faces objections in the House from Representative Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Celler, 81, is opposed to what he calls the "teenage vote," and has refused to allow the House even to consider the question of lowering the voting age. But Celler, who helped to draft the 1965 act, has no such reservations about the rest of the voting-rights package as passed by the Senate.

Nor should he have. The Senate version includes the President's proposals for the nationwide suspension of literacy tests and relaxation of residency requirements. But it also retains, for five more years, the strong enforcement machinery that Nixon would scrap. The original act applied to states and counties in the North and South where less than 50% of the voting-age population was registered for the 1964 election, and its impact was felt primarily in the South. The Senate-passed measure has been expanded to include counties where less than half the eligible voters were registered in 1968 as well. Thus, because of heavy population shifts, the bill, theoretically at least, could bring federal pressure to bear on counties in Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon and New York's populous boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx. Discrimination of the kind that used to prevail in the South is extremely rare in the North, however, and it is doubtful that the Justice Department will find many violations.

Though the fight over the Voting Rights Act must still go another round in the House, politicians on both sides are already looking beyond congressional action to the impact of the 18-year-old vote on themselves and the country. It may be lighter than many expect. Though most politicians have assumed that lowering the voting age will cause a swing to the left, Political Demographer Richard Scammon predicts no such effect. Using as a guide the 35%-40% turnout of those under 21 in two of the states that already allow them to vote--Georgia and Kentucky--Scammon ran the youth vote back over the 1968 election. The results of his experiment should prove reassuring to any politician worried about being ousted from office by youth. Not one state that Richard Nixon carried would have switched columns because of the kids.

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