Youth v. the Constitution

For years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower's State of the Union Message, 1954.

The U.S. Senate last week voted 34 to 24 in favor of the amendment that would add to the nation's electorate 6,200,000 youths between 18 and 21. But the vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed. The 24 Senators who blocked the amendment were all Democrats, many of them Southerners, who based their opposition mainly on the principle of states' rights.

The Constitution vests in state legislatures the power to set the qualifications of voters in federal as well as in state elections. This power has been curtailed by constitutional amendment: in 1870 the 15th Amendment gave the vote to Negroes and in 1920 the 19th Amendment gave the vote to women. Unlike discrimination against a race or sex, the question of minimum voting age, a purely arbitrary figure at best, failed to confront the Senators with a compelling issue of democratic justice.

Senator Richard Brevard Russell, whose native Georgia is the only state where 18-year-olds already have the vote, led the anti-amendment attack. Said Russell: "I think that permitting all those attaining the age of 18 to vote in my state has worked very well . . . but I do not propose to vote to coerce any other state of the Union to follow the example of my state. Neither do I propose to vote for an amendment which would put my state in a straitjacket."

Although the amendment failed, Dwight Eisenhower could take satisfaction in a rare display of solidarity by his party: not a single Republican vote was cast against him.

Also last week in Congress:

P: The Senate Banking and Currency Committee agreed on an intricate housing bill incorporating portions, but not all, of the President's housing program (see BUSINESS).

P: The Senate passed, 73 to 3, a bill to ban shipments of fireworks after July 1 into states where fireworks are illegal.

P:The Senate passed a $5.7 billion money bill for independent Government agencies (e.g., Veterans Administration, TVA, Atomic Energy Commission), $287 million less than the Administration's request, but $135 million more than the House had voted.

P: The House cleared for the President a money bill giving $3,332,732,700 to the Treasury and Post Office Departments, $6,050,300 less than the Administration's request.

P: The House Appropriations Committee voted to increase each Congressman's office expense allowances (for stationery, postage, clerks' salaries, etc.) by $5,551 a year. Total cost: $2.414,710.

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