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tion work before receiving the major messages in January. It could then take up the budget promptly, and would greatly improve its chances for completing action on all appropriation bills before June 30. It would work actively on pending legislation during November and December in most years. It should be able to adjourn in advance of the national party conventions in presidential years, and by the middle of July in most years.

2. The period between election and inauguration would be shortened to approximately 5 weeks. This interval, whatever its length, is potentially one of great danger, and should, therefore, be as short as possible. But there must be time to count the election returns and make any necessary recounts; and the incoming President must have some minimum period in which to organize his administration.

3. The length of the presidential election campaign would be shortened by a month and it would be concentrated in September-a good time to hold it-assuming that the parties would continue to hold their conventions in July or August.

4. In the event of a change in administration, the major messages to Congress in January would all become the responsibility of the new administration-as they should be. It would have 2 months in which to prepare them, a period substantially longer than that implied in Senator Mansfield's Senate Joint Resolution 23, under which the new President would take office December 1.

5. The weather on the first Friday after the first Monday in November may not be ideal, but it does come when there is some reason to expect that the weather will be suitable for large-scale outdoor ceremonies, unlike January 20.

6. Many, perhaps most of the State governments, would benefit from a change in the date of the general election, especially if the date on which the Governor and other elected State officers take office could also be adjusted. The States have their own problems of transition when a new Governor is elected, and are becoming increasingly aware that their existing schedules for inauguration of the Governor and convening of the legislature are not completely satisfactory. Most Governors need to be inaugurated at earlier dates than is now the case if they are to be ready for an intensive period of work in the legislature in the late winter and spring of their first year in office. In view of the convergence of these various reasons for change, it seems to me that the proposed constitutional amendment, or something like it, might be relatively easy of adoption if it could be confined to the scheduling problem alone. The draft attached has been prepared with regard for the other pending proposals, would put no obstacle in the way of electoral college reform, and could move forward either simultaneously or in advance of such other proposals. I suppose I do not need to read this draft. I would like to submit it for the record.

Senator KEFAUVER. It will be made a part of the record.

(The draft of proposed constitutional amendment, referred to, follows:)

TIME OF ELECTION, CONVENING OF CONGRESS, AND INAUGURATION

SECTION 1. Sections 1 and 2 of the 20th article of amendment of the Constitution of the United States are hereby repealed.

SEC. 2. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the first Friday after the first Monday in November, and the terms of Sena

tors and Representatives at noon on the first Monday in November, of the years in which their successors are elected; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

SEC. 3. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the first Monday in November, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

SEC. 4. The election for Senators and Representatives shall be held in each State on the first Tuesday in October of the years in which such elections are to be held.

SEC. 5. The Congress shall adjust the times of voting for President to conform to the provisions of this article; and the legislatures of the respective States are authorized to adjust the times of State elections, where necessary or desirable to conform to the provisions of this article, and may also make suitable adjustments in the times of the beginning and ending of terms of office of elected State officers.

SEC. 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within 5 years from the date of its submission.

Senator KEFAUVER. Now, this goes further than the Mansfield amendment.

Mr. DAVID. It goes further in dealing with the dates, yes, sir, particularly in changing the date of election, which is changed for Congress in section 4.

Senator KEFAUVER. One advantage of section 3, having Congress meet the first Monday of November, it would enable us to get out before July 1 and meet the demand of our wives that we ought to go home.

Mr. DAVID. This was one of the major things I had in mind, sir. Senator KEFAUVER. Mr. Rayburn takes a dim view of this under the present system.

Mr. DAVID. I call your attention again to section 5, sir, simply because I think that one reason this notion of changing the date of election has been regarded generally as impossible has been because of the complications of all the other elections tied to it, but with this relatively simple language, the States could take care of that without going through the rather time-consuming process of amending the State constitutions in half the States.

Senator KEFAUVER. Can you, by Federal constitutional amendment, make it unnecessary for the States to amend their constitutions?

Mr. DAVID. The Federal amendment would override. I think this is sound law. It is an unusual form of drafting, I agree, but as far as the basic action is concerned, it is somewhat akin to the woman's suffrage amendment which, of course, had exactly the same effect on the State governments and State constitutions that it did on the Federal. It was a change in qualifications for voting in State elections as well as for Federal.

Senator KEFAUVER. Yes; that is true. This would make it unnecessary for them to amend their constitutions. They could, merely by legislative action, change the date of their elections?

Mr. DAVID. That is it exactly. It does not make it mandatory, it simply unfreezes it. Of course, I think myself people were very foolish to put in their State constitutions things of this kind tied to a Federal statute. The thing was not put down in the Federal Constitution, but the State constitutions written after 1845 seemed to feel that the first Tuesday after the first Monday was never going to be questioned. Senator KEFAUVER. Some time back, I was talking with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. John Bailey. I

do not suppose he would mind my telling about this. He said that one problem that the national committee has at the present time between November 4 or early November and Inauguration Day was the tremendous expense that they had to bear in all of the preparation for the new administration. The candidate can hardly be expected to bear all the expense of the trips of advisers to Washington to meet with him and talk with him. There has to be a tremendous amount of research done, interviewing possible appointees. So that the time in which that would have to be done would be considerably shortened.

Mr. DAVID. I believe the expense burden that fell on the Democratic Party on this occasion was a new thing, to the extent that it had not previously been assumed on the same scale in any previous year by any party organization.

In the Eisenhower case, 1952-53, I believe they used unexpended funds of the Citizens for Eisenhower, which had some unexpended funds, unlike the Democratic National Committee.

Senator KEFAUVER. Which, come November, was in debt $3 million. Mr. DAVID. The most recent issue of the State Government, April 1961, has an article discussing the transition situation in Massachusetts, where a special fund of $25,000 was provided to take care of staff expenses for the Governor-elect in advance of his inauguration. Another article in the same issue reports similar expedients in other States. This is, of course, something that I have myself favored for the Federal Government.

Senator KEFAUVER. Have you written an article or discussed this in any papers?

Mr. DAVID. This particular suggestion is in print as a footnote in Laurin Henry's book on "Presidential Transitions," as a result of correspondence we had when he was writing his book. He discusses the problem in the final chapter of his book.

Senator KEFAUVER. It places an onerous burden on the part of a party if it has to staff the new President, unless the new President is able to bear a lot of the expense himself. Mr. Kirby, do you have some questions to ask Mr. David?

Mr. KIRBY. I have one suggestion and then one question.

Dr. David has done a very good piece of writing on the subject of ratifying conventions, which I have in the files and I would like to have it appended to the record.

Senator KEFAUVER. It will be appended.

Mr. KIRBY. One question, Dr. David, I wonder if you have allowed enough time between the convening of Congress on the first Monday in November and the inauguration of the new President, which could be 5 days later in the event of a contest. More acutely, if you went to a direct election, in which every vote is a potential contest, might not more time be desired?

Mr. DAVID. The basic time problem there would be between election and inauguration, which is about 5 weeks.

Mr. KIRBY. But the new Congress convening would count the votes under just about all systems.

Mr. DAVID. You mean a contest in Congress itself?
Mr. KIRBY. Yes.

Mr. DAVID. Well, that could be a problem, I would have to agree. Of course, under the present situation, it is a matter of less than 3

weeks.

Mr. KIRBY. Would it seriously hamper your proposal to extend that time?

Mr. DAVID. No; if you could push back the convening of Congress. This draft, of course, is the first drafting of this particular set of ideas. As I got into it, I realized there were more complications than I thought, as one always does in getting into these things.

The problem of naming days of the week for each event versus a specified date in the month is one that needs a little more thought. But if it is possible to convene Congress within 3 weeks after the election, why, I would be in favor of it."

Senator KEFAUVER. Dr. David, it is good of you to come again to this committee and give us your views and your thoughts brought current by recent happenings. We feel you have made quite a contribution to the thinking on the subjects we have discussed. Thank you very much. It is good to see you again.

Mr. DAVID. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a privilege

to be here.

Senator KEFAUVER. Mr. Richard H. Hansen, University of Nebraska.

Mr. Hansen is an attorney and is assistant librarian of the College of Law, University of Nebraska. He has specialized in study and analysis of presidential primary laws and is regarded as one of the leading experts in this field. We are very glad to have his views.

I want to say, too, that Mr. Hansen comes as an old friend to the chairman of this committee. I have a very high personal regard for him.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD H. HANSEN, COLLEGE OF LAW,
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you very much, Senator. I appreciate your remarks more than I can say. In addition to being an old friend of yours, Senator, I have corresponded on several occasions with Senator Dirksen, who is a member of the subcommittee, and have always received a very prompt and favorable reply from him and the finest cooperation I could possibly have had. So I feel that here, as well as in Nebraska, I have friends on both sides of the aisle.

Senator KEFAUVER. We will see that Senator Dirksen has a copy of your statement.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you, Senator. My testimony today will be limited to the presidential primary aspects of Senate Joint Resolutions 1, 9, and 16. I think you have already very graciously talked about my qualifications. It would be immodest for me to say anything further on that subject.

I believe that research, and I have done 9 years of it, must be based on much more than spending time in libraries and getting the dust off the books. I say this as an acting law librarian and with the support of most lawyers. Therefore, I have tried very diligently to solicit the opinions of politicians, lawyers, and educators.

I was very happy to see Dr. Paul David here. We have corresponded often on the subject. I have also corresponded with Mr.

Childs of the National Municipal League and we worked on his model law. I believe that research should lead to some tangible result. That is why I have such an interest in these bills.

As a Nebraskan I am particularly pleased to talk on this subject, because our State and Oregon were the birthplaces of the presidential primary. You spoke earlier of the part that our great Senator Norris played in backing the presidential primaries. We have accrued considerable experience in the operation of primary laws. I agree wholeheartedly with a remark the late Gov. James M. Cox of Ohio, Democratic presidential nominee in 1920, made to me in a letter. He said that it is indeed fortunate that under our Federal system it is possible for the States to experiment, to serve as a laboratory, in democratic experiments of this nature.

Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like very much to introduce into the record this letter from Mr. Cox, which was written to me on June 23, 1955. I have felt rather guilty holding this rather historic expression of opinion in my personal files and I would like to submit it to you.

Senator KEFAUVER. Since you have described it at this point in the record, we will have it printed at this point in the record rather than in the appendix.

(The letter referred to follows:)

Mr. RICHARD H. HANSEN,

College of Law, University of Nebraska,
Lincoln, Nebr.

DAYTON DAILY NEWS, Dayton, Ohio, June 23, 1955.

DEAR MR. HANSEN: I regret that I cannot supply the information you seek regarding the action of President Wilson or the attitude of President Franklin Roosevelt pertaining to presidential direct primaries. Theodore Roosevelt, you will remember, gained momentum for his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 1912 by resort to the direct primary, notably in Pennsylvania.

The demand for presidential direct primaries resulted from obvious evils in the convention system. I have thought it fortunate that the problem could be approached piecemeal, experimentally, as it has been, by different States according to their different conditions and attitudes. I am inclined to think that the experiment is not yet sufficiently conclusive to justify a present plunge into the direct presidential primary on a national scale.

This question is bound up, it seems to me, with the larger one of our whole way of electing Presidents. The electoral college, save as a vote-counting device, is obsolete and were better abandoned. The rule which gives the whole of a State's electoral vote to a candidate with plurality of the popular vote results in an unwholesome concentration of power in a few pivotal States. There is need for a careful recasting of the whole electoral method in keeping with the experience of the century and a half since the present method was devised.

The question of a national presidential primary would belong, I should think, with such an overhauling of the general method of electing Presidents.

Sincerely,

JAMES M. Cox.

Mr. HANSEN. I feel, with the late Governor Cox, that we should utilize the experience of the States to the fullest in drafting or considering any law. That experience has been written into my article in the University of Nebraska Law Review and that experience is foremost in my mind in analyzing the bills before you today.

Senator KEFAUVER. I know of your article in the Nebraska Law Review. It is interesting and factual and one of the finest in existence. With your permission I would like to print it in the appendix to the record.

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