Unconventional Reform

In the ritual of parties-out-of-power, the Democrats are beginning to rally around the unifying idea that Richard Nixon can be beaten in 1972--a thought encouraged by the party's gains in the 1970 elections. It is hardly too early for the Democrats to begin. The party is financially strapped, disorganized and lacking any coherent special program to offer as an alternative to the Administration's.

For the moment, however, the Democrats are concentrating on party basics. Last week the Democratic National Committee gathered in Washington to adopt some of the procedural reforms that were much debated in the midst of the almost self-destructive Democratic Convention in Chicago.

One of the major complaints then was that the selection of delegates to the convention was undemocratic, favoring small states over large. On this, the committee compromised last week, voting to allot delegate strength 53% on the basis of a state's electoral votes--a concession to smaller states--and 47% on the size of the state's Democratic vote for President in the last three elections--a decision that will give more convention power to the big-city states such as New York, California and Illinois.

The committee took other steps to open up the party system at the lowest levels. It barred the unit rule--meaning that individual delegates can vote their own preferences rather than being forced by party machines to vote en bloc. Delegates must be selected in the year of the convention, which will help to eliminate the unresponsiveness of delegates chosen sometimes four years in advance. By amending requirements that tend to exclude less professional participants and ordering antidiscrimination standards, the committee hopes to gather more blacks, women and the young into the party process. The filing fee for delegates cannot exceed $10, for example, and a petition to run needs the names of no more than 1% of the body selecting the delegates. In order to reduce the power of party bosses, the committee also decreed that no more than 10% of the delegates can be chosen by state committees.

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