"Within the Framework"

Working from fragmentary records, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission ruefully estimated last September that in the South only one Negro out of every four of voting age was registered. To thwart systematic exclusion of eligible Negroes from voting lists, the commission proposed that, where investigation proved exclusion, the President appoint federal registrars to guarantee voting rights denied by local officials. Promptly denounced by Southerners, the proposal was coolly received by President Eisenhower and Attorney General William P. Rogers. One reason: the registrar plan, as a direct executive remedy, would frontally assault what remained of "states' rights'' and might ultimately be cast aside by the courts as unconstitutional.

In Washington last week, Attorney General Rogers moved to place protection of voting rights firmly "within the established judicial framework" by proposing an alternative to the registrar device. Rogers' plan: federal district courts would be authorized to appoint voting referees to certify qualified voters in federal, state and local elections who may have been deprived of their right to vote by local officials. Obvious advantages of the referee proposal: unlike the registrar plan that applied to federal elections only, it would apply to all elections; a referee need not stop at registration but would be able to follow a complaint from voting list to ballot box to final tally of the vote. Aimed at strengthening the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the referee plan, said Rogers, was "in line with the spirit of the recommendations of the commission."

The proposal, coming almost five months after the commission's recommendations, was promptly attacked as a belated Republican attempt to grab political credit on a hot election issue--especially since Rogers is Vice President Nixon's close friend and adviser. While Dixiecrats maneuvered to send Rogers' proposal to the limbo of Mississippi's Senator James 0. Eastland's Judiciary Committee, liberals lamented the last-minute torpedoing of the registrar plan, to which they are heavily committed. But Rogers seemed to have the last and most effective word: the referee plan, he said, had been presented as soon as it had been carefully worked out. And all sides had to admit that, at first blush, it was the most reasonable idea anybody had thought of yet.

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