Senator KEFAUVER. Would it not be more likely that a populous Southern State like Florida, or, if we consider Texas a Southern State, might be more apt to approve a reduction in its voice than Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, or New Hampshire, or Rhode Island, or even South Dakota?

Senator CASE of South Dakota. The populous States, of course, would increase their presidential voice in a direct voting, but if you preserve for 33 of the States the voice they have in presidential voting today, you would only have to get 5 additional States to ratify, and the reaction following the last general election, I think, would insure that you could get 5 additional States.

(7) It should be pointed out that this plan would increase the importance of voting. Each individual voter could be nearly assured that his vote would count in determining the result whether he voted with the majority or minority in his particular State.

This, Mr. Chairman, in my opinion-this resolution would do what you want to be done and, yet, present an amendment which can win ratification.

Mr. Chairman, I have had prepared a little study which takes the presidential elections from 1920 to the present, to 1960, and shows how the votes of the States would have been divided under this plan.

I submit this, and I think it will be helpful if it could appear in the record because I assume that every Senator would want to know how this would work in his State and how it would have worked in the elections in recent years, particularly since 1920. I took 1920 because that was the first year in which we had women's suffrage, in which we had the effect of a larger popular vote.

Senator KEFAUVER. Yes; I think that would be of interest.

Senator CASE of South Dakota. In comment on it only, may I say this, just to illustrate. In the last election, Mr. Kennedy received 303 electoral votes; Mr. Nixon, 219; others, 15.

Had this plan been in operation in the last election, Mr. Kennedy would have received 271 votes, would still have been elected; Mr. Nixon would have received 261 votes. There would have been a margin of 10 electoral votes, which would have been very close in reflection of the popular vote, in which there was a difference of only about 100,000 votes. The five unpledged electors, of course, we would not count, but, had we not had the electors, these votes would have gone to a presidential candidate, one way or the other.

But, in any event, while it would not have changed the result in the Kennedy-Nixon election, the electoral vote would have more closely reflected the popular vote.

Now, it is interesting to note that in each of the elections I have referred to, the final result would not have been changed so far as concerns the President who was elected. But in each case, since 1920, these would have been a closer reflection of the popular vote that was cast.

I submit those for the record.

Senator KEFAUVER. They will be made a part of the record at this point.

Election of 1956

The 3 sets of figures in each column for each candidate are: Percent of popular vote; percent of unit vote;

and unit vote]

1 Indicates States in which only 1 candidate received more than 1/5 of the popular vote. Therefore, all unit votes go to him.

Basic source: Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election 1956. Compiled by the Clerk of the House of Representatives.