cated by the Board. It might also create the impression of an endorsement of candidates by the Board. Such an impression, of course, would be a violation of the Board's official neutrality.

Third, the Board feels that this is an unnecessary function for the Board to perform. The print and broadcast media and community groups such as the League of Women Voters already do an adequate job of distributing statements of candidates. The relative smallness and compactness of the District makes a personal campaign not too difficult.

Fourth, section 504 (e) provides that candidates will pay a fee for inclusion of their statement in the pamphlet. The Board is quite reluctant to see the reinstituting of fees for candidates running for public office. The Board recommended the abolition of the fees which were formerly required of candidates running for election to the Board of Education. The Board feels that the $100 fee will tend to opt certain people out rather than help them.

Finally, the Board must oppose this provision because of the cost which would be involved. The recent mailing of the sample referendum ballot to every registered voter cost $30,000 for postage alone.

COMPENSATION

The Board concurs with section 507, Amendments to the Election. Act. In the case of section 507 (c), the Board recommends that the Chairman, who would become full-time under this provision, be paid at a rate commensurate with the position. Such a rate should be above the maximum for any staff member, which at the present is GS-15.

As indicated, the Board of Elections for the District of Columbia appreciates this opportunity to make these comments. We would urge that you move as expeditiously as possible so that our citizens may have the benefit of your wisdom in reporting out and passing a campaign financial reporting bill for the District of Columbia.

Mr. FAUNTROY. Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

Dr. Martin, would you care to add anything at this moment?

POLL WATCHERS

Dr. MARTIN. Some considerable concern was expressed here earlier this morning about the rights of independent candidates, and I would like to make it clear that independent candidates of the same rights with respect to having watchers at the polling places and at the place where the ballots are being counted as all other candidates.

The law requires that each candidate be permitted to have one watcher in a polling place and the place where the ballots are being counted. Where the ballots are being counted, normally there are several types involved in counting or there is a process of handling the ballots that requires more than one person.

The Board's policy has been to divide the number of positions available for watchers among the various candidates in keeping with whether the candidate is the candidate for Board position or an atlarge position and space is a primary consideration.

We try to permit as many watchers where the ballots are being

counted as will not provide for an overcrowding situation and present the orderly carrying through of the operation, but will have full opportunity to observe themselves or representatives at the polling places and the places where the ballots are being counted.

ADDITIONS TO THE BOARD

Mr. FAUNTROY. In addition to the question that the Chairman of the Board, did you not also suggest that we need to expand the Board of Election membership also?

Mr. FISHER. Yes, that should be expanded. Two additional Board members, we believe, would be required.

Mr. FAUNTROY. As I recall, you, in earlier testimony-and you may correct me if I am wrong-you indicated that you felt that the present membership of the Board is inadequate for dealing with what it now has in terms of responsibilities.

Mr. FISHER. We haven't testified on that point. We suggested that the membership be made full time for all three members.

Mr. FAUNTROY. What was the reason for that?

Mr. FISHER. The work load is the main reason. We are a little different than most boards. We are involved not only with the policy decisions but, some administrative decisions also. We feel that it is necessary to keep our hands right on top of the situation.

We have taken the position, as you see, that one member be made full time if you are going to consider favorably appointing two additional members.

If not, then we would suggest that the present three-member Board be made a full time Board.

Mr. FAUNTROY. I have been quite sympathetic with your request for expansion of either the full time status or the part time status of members of the Board to full time status and additional member for the reason that your responsibilities are going to expand substantially in the manner not only of the delegate and school board elections, but elections every two years with respect to the City Council, and ultimately, the Mayor and many of us feel that because the campaign finance aspects of the Board of Elections' responsibility is going to be so specialized that a division within it to address that great need should be established, at least for this first election.

Mr. FISHER. I would certainly agree. If the limit for the Board members, which is now $11.250 per year, is dropped and there is no limit set, then I think that the Board could very well manage with its responsibilities having no limit.

It makes people work for gratis with the limit that has been set. I myself have worked since February without being compensated, and I am sure that one of my colleages has worked a number of days without compensation. I think that this will happen again if the limit is not dropped, or if the Board members are not paid full time. Mr. FAUNTROY. Thank you. Counsel.

Mr. WASHINGTON. I don't have any questions.

Mr. FAUNTROY. Hr. Hogan.

Mr. HOGAN. We will have an opportunity to discuss with these individuals some of the questions that we might have. There is one thing I would like to ask the Board members to address.

When we held our hearings a couple of years ago on the election, the D.C. election laws, there were some questions raised about the data processing equipment and how that might be vulnerable to some problems, and if you could look at that testimony that was addressed to the Commitee some year and a half or two years ago, and perhaps have some answers to these questions, it would certainly be helpful.

If you have a hotly contested election this fall, and I assume you will, one of the things that probably will be a matter of some concern to the delegates and to the citizens is whether that electronic processing equipment is at all vulnerable.

Mr. FISHER. We have taken steps in the past to assure the candidates that the equipment is working correctly before we start on our chart, during the time that we are counting and after. For the next election, September 10, we expect to employ a different type of vote counting system.

Mr. HOGAN. I don't want to take your time now. We could discuss that with your staff members on the mark up.

Mr. WASHINGTON. It would be helpful if some members of the staff would be here tomorrow. I would like to raise a question.

BOARD'S JURISDICTION

It is my understanding that GAO takes the position that administering campaign finances is not a job for a Board or commission. It is really a job for an executive director or staff director, and the Boards or commissions should not on a daily basis be in the operation of the administration of campaign finances.

It is a decision-making process and problems of getting them together. I would like to have your views. We are going to submit some questions for the record.

I think you ought to give some consideration to that. If that is true, you may not share that opinion. Essentially, the function of one person and a board should not be operating on a daily basis with the affairs of campaign financing. That should be a matter for staff. When we went to the floor, the members of this Board were disinclined to have commissioners or board members making a lot of money.

We suffered from that. It was $5,000. They screamed. They said that kind of work ought to be done by staff and not by commissioners and board members.

Mr. FISHER. I have not seen the statement of GAO. I would like to go through it once I have had the privilege of seeing it. Dealing with elections has required for some time a lot of time from the Board itself, and it is true we turn over a lot of responsibilities to our staff and to our staff director, Mr. Perkins. However, there are certain things that come about and may come about on a daily basis that require that the Board meet and act as quickly as possible.

That has been going on for a number of years. There has not been 1 year that I have been on the Board in the seven years that I have not served for a considerable length of time without being compensated, and I don't think that GAO or members of the Congress have the intent of anyone working without being paid.

Mr. WASHINGTON. I don't advance that purpose of whether or not services ought to be paid. It is simply a matter of procedure and good

conduct. And GAO's position is that if the commission had to handle federal elections, not one person of the executive type could handle it and the commissioners ought to set policy and not be in the day-to-day problems of running the business.

Mr. FISHER. When you are given the day-to-day problem of being a Board member, you are given the responsibility of seeing that the election runs smoothly.

Mr. WASHINGTON. You are saying that the matter is not delegatable? Mr. MARTIN. May I add that here in the District of Columbia we have had a slow but progressive expansion of Board functions. Almost every year additional responsibilities have been turned over to the Board by the Congress. This has meant that we have had each year to take up a number of new policies and then to provide for the effective implementation.

I would suppose that in the future once having been given the basic responsibility now for self government, that generally there will be in time a basic set of policy directives that would make it possible for staff personnel to be aware at most times of just what is required in a particular situation, and it will then be less necessary for the Board to have to spend as much time as it does beyond the matter of overall policy.

I think that is in the future as yet. If you are going to be sure that you are going to be able to tell the people of the city that the Board is doing everything possible to see that elections are run as they ought to be.

Mr. WASHINGTON. We invest in the Mayor all the executive authority for the District of Columbia. Except to the extent that there is an expressive or explicit nondelegatability, it seems that the Board could delegate him the functions and most of its functions in a policy position rather than on a day-to-day basis, and an executive director or general counsel, or whatever, would be responsible. He could make decisions. He would not have to take everything to the Board.

Mr. FISHER. That is true if we have a set pattern and set amount of rules or a set law, but each year there have been additional laws passed by the Congress, and we must act on and do something about them.

Up to this point, that has not been the case, so it sounds good, what you are saying, but in the past, it has not been workable at all and I doubt what my colleague is saying that in the near future it won't be workable so that we will have to refer back to what I said originally, and that is that the Board, in my judgment, should either be full time or drop the limit of compensation.

Mr. FAUNTROY. Thank you. I would like to request that Mr. Perkins might make himself available at the beginning of the hearing tomorrow in case there are members that would like to receive questions from the Board.

Thank you.

I have decided to extend the hearing by a few minutes to hear these three witnesses. First, we have Mr. Jack Nevius, Chairman of our City Council, who was scheduled to be here today and who wishes to testify. Thereafter, we will have a panel of two of the candidates whom I think it will be appropriate to hear. They are Mr. John Thornton and Mrs. Susan Meehan.

Welcome, Chairman Nevius, to the hearing and thank you for your patience.

STATEMENT OF HON. JACK NEVIUS, CHAIRMAN, D.C. COUNCIL

Mr. NEVIUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your letting me testify. I will try to be as brief as possible. I appreciate the opportunity of testifying without a written statement in advance, but I do have some concrete suggestions with respect to the three matters that the Chairman asked me to comment on and a couple of others.

First of all, to the thrust of this bill, of course, I am in favor, as I mentioned at the last hearing, of a bill of this kind and I won't go into the subject today that I testified on specifically at that time, but with respect to the three things I have been specifically asked about, namely, voter registration, pamphlets, the division of campaign financing and I would like to touch briefly on a couple of other details.

VOTER INFORMATION

With respects to the pamphlets, the voter information pamphlets, I am inclined to recommend to this committee for this election, the first time around under this bill that the campaign pamphlets idea not be adopted.

I am inclined to think that it would be better to delegate this responsibility to the new City Council as one of the things for them to take up in their first two years, and that it probably would not be necessary or even particularly desirable this time around.

Let me suggest a couple of reasons: first of all, as we have seen in elections so far, the newspapers and civil groups have heretofore been doing a good job of precisely this sort of thing, providing a candidate.

We wrote a 250 word article for the newspaper and that has been done for the school board elections, and since this time, there has been an intense interest on the part of the news media to publicize the identical statements submitted by candidates, and I think that would serve the purpose for this time around sufficiently.

It would save a great deal of cost in terms of activity on the part of the Board of Elections for getting out an official pamphlet.

I understand that California does have a provision like this, but there is a difference between the District of Columbia and California in my estimation. There is no single group or similar medium that covers the whole State of California that could perform this function gratis for the Election Board, and we have here two groups that are quite willing to do that, and they cover the whole geographical area involved in these elections.

It seems that there is a difference in the District and California on that score. With respect to the figures on the pamphlet, it seems that for a splinter candidate, they run heavy, and from a point of view of a taxpayer, they won't begin to cover the cost of printing, let alone the editing work involved in producing this pamphlet.

My final point-and I think the one that is most important-is the business about the Board of Elections being required to determine what is defamatory matter.