History in an Hour

President Nixon, who has had the normal quota of trouble getting what he wants from a Democratic Congress, last week got what he did not want and did not need. It was a historic legislative package of voting rights, wrapped in constitutional doubt and ticking with uncertain political potential. The bill on the President's desk includes the extension of voting rights to an estimated 11,000,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 21, which would be the first such enlargement of the franchise since women were given the right to vote 50 years ago. The 18-year-old vote provision was a late-starting addition to legislation that renewed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Under that highly successful act, more than 1,740,000 Southern blacks have been added to the voting lists. A year ago, the President proposed renewal of the act for another five years. But he asked that it apply throughout the nation and that changes in local voting rules no longer be subject to prior federal approval. As a result, already overworked Government lawyers would have to initiate time-consuming legal action after laws had already been passed. That would have dispersed enforcement efforts in the South, and thus his proposal was seen by civil rights advocates as an attempt to weaken the act.

Senate Packaging. Nixon prevailed in the House, but the Senate demurred. It voted instead for a straightforward five-year extension of the civil rights aspects of the existing act and then did some broadening of its own. First, it limited residency requirements for presidential elections to 30 days, making it possible for an additional 5,000,000 Americans to vote. Then the Senate added to the bill a section giving the vote to 18-year-olds.

That put the next move up to the House, which had never debated the franchise extension and where 82-year-old Representative Emanuel Celler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was violently opposed to it. The first key move was to get from the pro civil rights majority on the House Rules Committee a resolution under which the House would bypass the normal procedure--sending the bill to a House-Senate conference committee--and instead vote directly on the Senate package. Not only did the resolution allow the bill to avoid the hostility of Mississippi Senator James Eastland in a conference, it provided that the House could not separate the two aspects of the bill but must act in a single ballot on the entire package.

Facts of Life. Parliamentary historians may some day marvel at what the Democrats wrought. They were confronted with a situation in which the House had already voted with Nixon on his version of the voting rights bill. Most of the House was probably also with him in his belief that while the vote for 18-year-olds was desirable, it could best be legally accomplished through a constitutional amendment and not ordinary legislation. But there were other elements in the picture. Every representative faces re-election in November, many in districts where, from conviction or expediency, they cannot appear to be against voting rights for blacks. At the same time, some of the nation's youth is at war in Indochina and at home; to appear to be denying them the ballot is, seemingly, to deny them admission to the political system.

The maneuver turned two minorities into a majority. The crucial vote came on Wednesday of last week. There was a single hour of debate. Pressure came from the White House for a vote against the bill, and from the N.A.A.C.P. and the A.F.L.-C.l.O. for it. During the debate, the G.O.P.'s respected William Mc-Culloch of Ohio warned the House that a "no" vote would mean that "the most effective civil rights law in our nation's history will be emasculated.'' Celler was now as strongly in favor of the package as he had been opposed to the 18-year-old vote provision standing alone. Said one cynical observer: "Some of the boys threw a net over Manny and explained the facts of life to him."

President's Turn. As the roll call began, cautious Republicans held back to see if their votes would be crucial enough to save Nixon. They would not. In the end, 59 Republicans defected. The vote on the resolution itself was 272-132.

The next move was the President's. He said he would make it early this week, and the betting at the White House was that he would sign the bill reluctantly. If he does, the problem goes to the courts, where the President feels the law will be declared unconstitutional. Many legal scholars agree with him, pointing to Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, which describes voters as males "being 21 years of age." On the other side of the argument, some lawyers contend that the "equal protection of the laws" demanded in Section 1 of the same amendment opens the way for Congress to act on the issue with simple legislation. Congress anticipated a Supreme Court test by explicitly providing for one to be made and completed, hopefully before the act takes effect at the beginning of 1971.

The potential political effect of the bill may disappoint the Democrats, who clearly believe Nixon fears a bloc of young voters and will suffer at their hands in 1972. In the four states where under-21s now vote--Georgia, Kentucky, Alaska and Hawaii--the evidence is that young voters tend to divide roughly as their parents do. Furthermore, statistics show that the younger the voting group, the lower the percentage actually voting. And the President could also take heart from the news from England, where 18-year-olds voted for the first time last week. They clearly did not hurt Conservative Edward Heath.

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