Senator KEFAUVER. Generally how many States are there, Senator Holland, that prohibit voting if a person is supported at public expense or by charitable institutions?

Senator HOLLAND There are 12 of such States which have varying provisions of one kind or another, those States being Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. You see, they extend pretty well over the Nation. The problem is not confined to any region of the Nation. And the statement which you have just incorporated in the record gives, I think, a rather clear picture of the nature of those provisions and of how these various States have felt it was necessary in the preservation of cleaner elections in those States, to take action in this field.

Second, Mr. Chairman, the proposed amendment prohibits the imposition of a poll tax as a prerequisite for such voting for Federal officials only, not relating to the voting for State or local officials or upon State or local issues. I emphasize this point, Mr. Chairman, because the cosponsors of this joint resolution strongly feel that the election of State and local officials and the making of decisions on strictly local matters, such as bond issues, tax mileage questions, referendums, recall procedures, and the like, are properly and more effectively handled on the State and local level, and we would strenuously oppose any effort to control such matters by Federal law.

Third, that the remedial effects of this amendment would apply not only to the State laws of all of the States, but also to future enactments of the Congress. In other words, we do not assume that the present sentiment so dominant in the Congress of the United States will continue to exist, but prefer to endeavor to protect the right of citizens to vote for Federal officials notwithstanding any possible later change of attitude by the Congress of the United States.

Fourth, that the proposed amendment would prohibit any other tax that is different from the ordinary poll tax, so-called, from being prescribed as a prerequisite for voting.

Fifth, that the proposed amendment would prevent either the United States or any State from setting up any property qualification as a prerequisite for participation in an election of Federal officers, with the exception of qualifications relating to those citizens who by State law are denied the right to vote because they are paupers or persons supported at public expense or by charitable institutions.

Mr. Chairman, the reason for making this proposed amendment a great deal broader in its application than any of the other similar proposals, at least those which I have seen, is that in our judgment it would be wholly futile to prohibit a denial of the right of suffrage by imposition of the poll tax while at the same time leaving the way open to any State which might want to limit the number of its electors, to do so by the imposition of another tax or the enactment of any property qualification which it might see fit to impose, thus leaving those two additional possibilities in the picture. The same restriction would apply to the Congress.

In other words, in the event of a change in sentiment, Congress could fall back on those other restrictions to limit participation in elections. And my own feeling is that it would be rather idle to knock out one method of doing something which we think is not sound and

leave other methods equally available by which the same course might be pursued.

I call to the attention of the distinguished chairman that when the Constitution was first drawn the matter of limitation of electors under general tax payment requirements, meaning taxes other than poll taxes, and under property qualifications, was a greater general deterrent to voting than was the poll tax, which at the time existed as a prerequisite to voting in only one State, the State of New Hampshire. It seems to me, particularly in view of the fact that the property qualification and the tax payment qualification, other than poll taxes, have been included within the various qualifications for voting by various States as late as 1930 or thereafter, that any method of dealing with this subject should be sufficiently broad to prevent the defeat of the wholesome objectives of the joint resolution by simply having various States turn to other means of gaining the same end.

So, Mr. Chairman, I want to make it very clear that this is a completely bona fide effort to meet what the cosponsors of this resolution regard as an evil in our governmental structure and to prevent it in such a way as to make it impossible for the same evil to come back under the guise of some other similar restrictive measure.

Mr. Chairman, I first call attention to the fact that those of us who introduced this amendment, and many, many others, are sincerely of the opinion that the present Constitution of the United States completely prevents and prohibits the accomplishment of this salutary objective by the mere enactment of a Federal statute. Our opinion is based upon a consideration of the sole provisions included within the Constitution which have to do with the matter of qualifications of electors in the several States to vote in the elections of Federal officials.

There are two such provisions and they are included in the Constitution in the same words, though the first provision was incorporated by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and appears in section 2 of article I of the original Constitution, whereas the second provision appears in the 17th amendment to the Constitution adopted by 36 States in 1912 and 1913,

I quote first that portion of section 2 of article I of the original Constitution which is applicable:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.

That provision, Mr. Chairman, still exists as included in the original Constitution, and still provides, as then, that the House of Representatives shall be chosen every second year in the States by the people of those States, and that

the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.

It would seem on the very face of it that there would be very little argument possible as to what this means because it seems so clear that each State is specifically allowed to retain the power-because the States already had that power-to prescribe the qualifications for the electors of the most numerous branch of its State legislature and that the Federal Constitution simply prescribes those same qualifications as the qualifications which shall be applicable to those who are allowed to participate in the election of Federal officials.

On May 13, 1912, the Congress of the United States submitted to the various States the 17th amendment to provide for the direct election of Members of the United States Senate. Prior to that time, as the able chairman well knows, the Senators had been elected under the preceding provision of the original Constitution providing that the legislatures of the several States were charged with the responsibility and clothed with the authority to elect United States Senators. I call attention of the able chairman to the first paragraph of the 17th amendment, which reads as follows:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for 6 years; and each Senator shall have 1 vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

The chairman has, of course, noted that the words providing in the case of the election of Senators the qualifications for electors are the identical words which appear in section 2 of article I of the original Constitution under which the qualifications were prescribed for those who should be qualified to serve as electors for Members of the House of Representatives. That, of course, would be logical because it was planned to have these elections as a single election in which Representatives and any Senators who might be required to be elected at that time would be elected by the same electors and in the same election. So it is not strange that the Congress used exactly the same formula and exactly the same words as are found in section 2 of article I of the original Constitution.

I think that it is worthy of mention that this is the only provision contained in the Constitution of the United States which appears twice and is stated each time in the same identical words. I think it is also worthy of note that, just as the framers of the Constitution in 1787 felt that they had worked out a formula which was sound and acceptable as a basis for inclusion in our fundamental law, the Constitution, so also the Members of Congress in 1912, after there were many more States in the Union than existed in 1787, felt that the formula was still sound for continued inclusion in the Constitution and, instead of making any effort to change it, they decided to follow that time-honored formula and to reincorporate it in the identical words which I have quoted.

Mr. Chairman, before going any further, I think it might be interesting and helpful to consider briefly the argument advanced by those who believe-and I do not question the sincerity of their belief—that Congress has the authority by mere passage of a Federal statute to overrule the decisions of the States in this matter, regardless of what they may have prescribed as the qualifications for electors of the most numerous branch of their State legislatures. I think a fair statement of their position is that they claim that in imposing the poll-tax requirement for voting, States have set up a perfectly arbitrary and meaningless and pretended qualification which in fact is no qualification whatever, and that State power has been misused to set up an artificial attempt to abuse the language of the Federal Constitution in such a way as to debar large numbers of citizens from voting. They attempt to give a meaning to the word "qualifications" as stated in the two places in the Federal Constitution I have mentioned, which relates to the capacity of the voter, his age, residence, and so forth,

and does not take into consideration any such element as whether or not the voter may or may not have paid a poll tax.

My distinguished former colleague, Senator Pepper, formerly a strong advocate of the statutory approach, stated in hearings before a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, July 19, 1941, the following. And I think this is a fair statement of the argument made by many Senators and House Members in this field. And I quote:

Now, I will admit, gladly, that the States have the right to prescribe reasonable qualifications for voters, and when those qualifications by the State are reasonable and proper, then they become Federal qualifications, but if the Federal Government through the Congress decides, that a State has imposed as a qualification something that is not a qualification but is a condition precedent, that under the guise of a qualification they have attempted to limit the Federal franchise and the enjoyment thereof, then the Federal Government has a right to say that this power that you have endeavored to assert is not a proper power. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that that is a very fair statement. And I have covered the records of the hearings on this matter-there are many statements, and I think that is as fair a statement as I have found anywhere.

Senator KEFAUVER. Having been interested in this matter in the past, both in the House and over here, I think that is a fair statement of the position of many of us who do take the position that this might be accomplished by direct legislation. I think that is a fair position. Senator HOLLAND. I thank the chairman. I endeavored to take a perfectly fair statement on the subject although I am completely out of accord with its conclusions.

It is interesting to note that throughout those hearings two distinguished lawyers, Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska and Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, "crossed swords" often with Senator Pepper on his approach to the problem.

The following statement, taken from Senate Report 625 of the 79th Congress, which has been inserted in the record of committee hearings by both Senator Pepper and Congressman Bender, of Ohio, also illustrates clearly the philosophy of advocates of the statutory approach. This, also, was one of the fairest statements that I could find in any of the reports on this subject. And I quote it:

We believe there is no doubt but that the prerequisite of the payment of a poll tax in order to entitle a citizen to vote has nothing whatever to do with the qualifications of the voter, and that this method of disfranchising citizens is merely an artificial attempt to use the language of the Constitution, giving the State power to set up qualifications, by using other artificial means and methods which in fact have no relation whatever to qualifications.

I believe that that is as fair a statement of the position of the opponents as appears in any of the reports.

Mr. Chairman, that would be a more appealing argument if we were starting out right now with the two statements in the Federal Constitution relative to the qualifications of electors and were not allowed the background of the governmental structure which existed in 1787 when the first of these provisions was worded by the framers of the Constitution, and in 1912 when the second of the provisions was submitted by the Congress serving at that time. I am sure that the able chairman well knows that the courts have found repeated occasions to announce and to follow the rule that the best method to interpret the meaning of words in a constitution, a statute, or a private

instrument, is to find and ascertain just what meaning those words were understood to have at the time of their use by the person who used them. There isn't any better established principle in the law than that. The meaning of a word is that which was understood and intended by the intelligent person who used it. In the case of the Constitutional Convention, it was, of course, a large group of intelligent persons, the keenest students of the law and of government who then lived in the young nation, and in 1912 those who used the word comprised the Senators and the Representatives from all States then in the Union, and there were then 48 States in the Union, as now.

Mr. Chairman, I think that it would be profitable, first, to go, as briefly as I may, into the question of just what was intended by the framers of the original Constitution in the use of the word "qualifications" and in their incorporation of it in section 2 of article I of the Federal Constitution.

I first quote from Mr. Madison who, as the chairman well knows, was 1 of the 3 brilliant writers of the Federalist papers and who was called upon by his associates to write that paper which bore on this subject; namely, the qualifications of electors in the electing of Federal officials. I quote from Mr. Madison in paper No. 52 of the Federalist, as follows:

I shall begin with the House of Representatives.

The first view to be taken of this part of the Government relates to the quaiilications of the electors and the elected.

Those of the former are to be the same with those of the electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the Convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper for the reason just mentioned. To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason, that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the Federal Government which ought to be dependent on the people alone. To have reduced the different qualifications in the different States to one uniform rule, would probably have been as dissatisfactory to some of the States, as it would have been difficult to the Convention. The provision made by the Convention appears, therefore, to be the best that lay within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State; because it is conformable to the standard already established, or which may be established by the State itself. It will be safe to the United States; because, being fixed by the State constitutions, it is not alterable by the State governments, and it cannot be feared that the people of the States will alter this part of their constitutions, in such a manner as to abridge the rights secured to them by the Federal Constitution.

So spcke Mr. James Madison, who history states knew more about what had transpired in the drafting of the Constitution and what was intended in the provisions which were incorporated and submitted to the several States for ratification than any other person of his time or than any other of the able collaborators who worked, as he did, as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Perhaps the most fruitful source of research to discover just what the framers of the Constitution meant when they used this word "qualifications" and provided, as they did, that the qualification for electors in the election of Federal officials should be the same as the qualifications for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures, is the provisions of the constitutions or colonial charters of the Original Thirteen States on this subject.