Poor Prospects for Reform

THE ELECTION

Richard Nixon's thin margin of popular votes widened only slightly as late returns and absentee ballots were totted up last week. He might console himself that his 324,966 plurality amounted to nearly three times the 118,574-vote figure by which John Kennedy defeated him eight years ago. Yet with 31,085,267 popular votes to Humphrey's 30,760,301, Nixon still claimed merely 43.5% of the electorate's approval -- the lowest percentage since Woodrow Wilson, battling both Republican William Howard Taft and Bull Mooser Teddy Roosevelt, won with 41.9% of the vote in 1912.

Wallace won 9,674,802 popular votes, or 13.5%.

The old math of the Electoral College, of course, showed Nixon enjoying a more comfortable victory. He collected 32 states for 302 electoral votes, while Humphrey had 13 states and the

District of Columbia for 191. George Wallace's five Southern states gave him 45 electoral votes.

The U.S. thus escaped for another four years the constitutional crisis that for generations has been inherent in the Electoral College system. Had none of the candidates gained the requisite 270-vote Electoral College majority, the nation would have drifted in dangerous uncertainty for weeks or even months. The possible scenario has become amply familiar. Wallace might have tried to barter his electors for concessions from one of the major candidates between Nov. 5 and Dec. 16, when the electors will cast their ballots. If he failed, the selection of the next President might have been thrown to the House of Representatives, where another deadlock might well have resulted. Democrats in the new House will outnumber Republicans, 243 to 192 (the old lineup: 247 Democrats, 188 Republicans) but each state delegation would have had only one vote, dictated by the wishes of the majority of the delegation. And neither party gained clear control over the 26 delegations that would have been necessary for the House to choose a winner. Democrats will command--but only in name--25 delegations, and the G.O.P. 20; five are evenly divided, hence would have lost their vote. Thus it might have been left to the Senate to select either Spiro Agnew or Edmund Muskie as Acting President.

A Harris poll last week showed that 79% of the nation favors electoral reform. Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh has scheduled Senate subcommittee hearings for January on a constitutional amendment providing for direct popular election of the President and Vice President. New York's Emanuel Celler will hold similar hearings in the House. "We have flirted," said Bayh, "with the most dangerous constitutional crisis faced by the United States in a long time."

It is extraordinary and possibly outrageous that the President and Vice President are the only two elected officials in the U.S. who are not chosen by direct popular ballot. Yet no matter how acute the need for reform, the prospects are discouraging. Americans overwhelmingly favor change now, but as new crises develop, they are likely to forget about the problem until some future presidential contest again threatens to capsize the election system. More important, smaller states are certain to reject an amendment that would severely diminish their importance. Since a constitutional amendment requires ratification by three-fourths of the states as well as approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, the old electoral college mathematics probably will apply again in 1972.

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