years of voters all under 21 down to 18 to the statistics and then the percentages began to show a drop. What does that mean? Does that mean because you added more people to those eligible the percentage went down or did the same percentages really come out across the age brackets but lesser numbers came out percentagewise because you had a larger number to work with? I don't know what that means I would think that you could get more people to come in and participate, yes. If people are turned off, I don't care if you go to their house and let them vote there, they are not going to vote. Mr. PANETTA. I agree with that. Your last conclusion is obviously no matter what form of registration you use, they have to be turned on by the election process. I agree with that. At the same time, I do think the more barriers that are eliminated, the greater the possiblity that you will have more voters.

Mr. KUSPER. I agree. I think voter registration statutes initially were intended to put barriers in front of people. As an administrator, I would not like to think that is the purpose behind the laws of Illinois. I would certainly think we have a vested interest in trying to maintain voter registration records so we know who is eligible and not eligible. But I don't want any barriers in front of anybody to vote.

Mr. PANETTA. With regard to the administrative problems that you indicated—and I think we all recognize the problems—would it help if we built in some type of time frame into this legislation to provide for the opportunity to be able to adhere to Federal law?

Mr. KUSPER. I made some notes to myself at one time, possibly suggesting to you that if "X" percentage of the States changed their laws, that the bill would not become applicable at all. That might get into another one of those ERA things where people lobby for and against and you get into hassles in the legislature. Then I thought there were other kinds of options and each of the options I thought of began to bother me.

I would certainly think that you might have, as was pointd out by one of the other members of the committee, some difficulty with some States getting laws enacted to make them conform. Whether or not that would be possible cr impossible in Illinois, I don't know. It might be difficult, but I think it could be done. I only speak now from the reference of my own State. I don't know the answer. I still want to keep my thinking about it and with your permission I will communicate somehow my views either through my congressman or through the committee diretly. I may come up with some brainstorm that might be helpful to the committee. I just don't know. Maybe a time frame would be right. Maybe delaying it for 4 years to give all legislatures a chance to look at it and to enact it for their own purposes in their own States, maybe that would be something laudable, I don't know. Yet I look forward to wanting the thing in effect for a presidential year because I think everybody should vote in a presidential year, although I want everybody to vote in all years, and I think 50 percent participation of those qualified to vote for the President of the United States is a national disgrace. But I am not one of those people who says voting should now be made mandatory as it is in some countries. We thought about having elections on Sunday to increase voter participation. We have prob

lems with that. I have spent 16 years of my life in this particular field and I guess there are no hard answers. We are certaily trying and I would like to be helpful in this if I could.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Kusper. You have been an intresting and splendid witness. We appreciate it.

Mr. KUSPER. Thank you, sir.

STATEMENT OF ARCHIE E. ALLEN, ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR, AND MR. SHERRILL MARCUS, FIELD DIRECTOR, THE VOTER EDUCATION PROJECT, INC.

Mr. Chairman and Members of the committee, thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to appear here for the purpose of discussing the impact of the proposed Universal Voter Registration Act of 1977.

I am here with my colleagues, Mr. Sherrill Marcus, VEP field director, to present testimony from the viewpoint of the experience of the Voter Education Project-a non-governmental, nonpartisan organization which has worked to advance minority political participation in the South since 1962.

The range of VEP experience spans the history of several distinct periods. VEP began its efforts when minority voting rights were not only denied by literacy tests and poll taxes, but also through economic intimidation and acts of violence. VEP helped to spotlight these injustices, appealing to the conscience of the Nation to make real the promise of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the goal of an interracial democracy.

The VEP experience encompasses the period in which the Voting Rights Act was encacted by Congress in 1965. The Voting Rights Act eliminated the literacy tests and many barriers to the ballot for minorities in the South. Since there was no affirmative governmental action to educate and motivate minority citizens to take advantage of the new opportunity for political participation, the Voter Education Project shouldered the responsibility for educating and helping to register almost 2 million black voters in the decade after 1965.

Because the VEP has experienced first-hand the effects of the denial of access to the political process, because we are painfully aware of the correlation between the outmoded hodgepodge of voter registration laws and the alarming number of citizens who do not participate in the electoral process, we welcome the proposed universal registration program.

Universal registration in the United States is a concept which is urgently needed to restore the health of our political system of government. It is not coincidence that the United States, which ranks behind most of the world's major democracies in terms of voter participation, uniquely places the responsibility of registration solely on the individual rather than on the State. Affirmative steps on the part of the Federal Government to assume the responsibility for encouraging and facilitating greater citizen involvement is long overdue.

Justification for the universal voter registration system is obvious. For many years, the Voter Education Project has rejected the

hodgepodge of diverse state voter registration laws because they deter voting, especially among minorities and the poor. When these registration laws were first enacted in the 19th and early 20th centuries, their purpose was to decrease, not increase, voting, especially by minorities, immigrants, and poor whites. Although other factors certainly may contribute to declining voter participation, the presence of unworkable, antiquated, and discriminatory voter registration laws have certainly contributed heavily to the declining rate of voter participation throughout this century.

It has been the general experience of the Voter Education Project that positive steps to ease the process of registration helps to increase the level of voter participation. The Voting Rights Act is considered the most significant civil rights legislation in this century because of its effectiveness in removing certain barriers to the political process. Some political subdivisions, primarily in larger urban areas, have simplified the registration process, extended registration hours, utilized deputy registrars, adopted mobile registration centers, and generally tried to facilitate the registration process. These positive steps have aided registration efforts of the VEP and local community organizations, making it easier and less costly to stimulate voter participation. Concern for easing access to the political process is the exception rather than the rule throughout most of the southern region. Especially in rural areas, citizens have to leave their jobs, spend time and money driving to the county seat, schedule their trips to conform to limited registration hours, and, finally, must be hassled by lengthy and unnecessary registration forms. The burden is especially great for minority group members, who must overcome the effects of a lifetime of outright exclusion from politics.

Despite the effects of the Voting Rights Act and the affirmative efforts of organizations like the Voter Education Project, there is still a serious disparity between the levels of black and white voter registration in the South. Although few States publish a racial breakdown of voters, the VEP estimates that the gap between black and white voter registration is somewhere between 12 and 15 percentage points. Thus, while whites may be registered at rates. exceeding 65 percent of eligible voters, the level of black registration stands at only abot 54 percent of all blacks of voting age.

Literacy tests and beatings are, hopefully, a thing of the past, so we have to look elsewhere to determine what activities and practices are responsible for the lingering gap between black and white registration rates. Following are some examples of activities which, applied collectively, tend to repress minority political strength: Few political subdivisions in the South make any affirmative nonpartisan effort to register eligible persons; registration hours and places are limited, inconvenient, and poorly publicized; dual registration, having to register on both city and county lists, is particularly burdensome to minorities who are not adequately informed of the requirement; few minority persons serve as registrars; minority citizens seeking to register still must interact at times with uncooperative and hostile registrars; fear of economic retaliation, threatened or otherwise, still discourages minority registration; unequal application of purges and the requirement for

reregistration has adversely affected some minority communities in recent years; local registrars often refuse to use their discretionary authority to appoint deputy registrars to accommodate minority voter registration drives.

In facing these and other obstacles over the past 15 years, the Voter Education Project has asserted that voting is a right and not a privilege. We have maintained that the only requirement which should be attached to the right to vote is that the prospective voter be 18 years old and a citizen of this country. If any form of registration is necessary, we hold that it should merely be for the process of identification.

Therefore, the Voter Education Project hails the proposed universal registration law as an exciting and major step toward the goal of an interracial democracy. The proposed act is simple, but contains sufficient safeguards to prevent abuse and, most important, it provides incentive to the states to develop and increase affirmative programs to increase citizenship participation. There is little doubt that the Universal Registration Act of 1977 will, if passed, bring about a general increase in voter participation.

A major concern of the Voter Education Project here today is that additional efforts be made to eliminate that gap between minority registration rates and the level of participation of white Americans. The Act could be considerably strengthened by the addition of incentives to States, similar to the incentive provisions already included, to encourage minority registration until such time that the disparity between minority and white participation has been eliminated.

To implement an incentive program for minority citizenship education in the States, it would be necessary to first establish, as a matter of public record, the racial breakdown of voters in each State. This information would be doubly valuable in that it would provide a gauge of the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act. [At present, only 4 of the 11 Southern States provide a breakdown of registered voters by race.] After the statistics are evaluated, those States in which the level of minority participation is substantially lower than that of the majority population would be eligible to receive Federal assistance for affirmative minority programs as provided generally under the provisions of section 7.

With perhaps 2 to 3 million unregistered blacks in the 11 Southern States, affirmative State citizenship education programs would have a major impact in increasing minority voting. It will, in the final analysis, take more than the removal of the registration requirement to convince minorities and other alienated and excluded Americans that they have a stake in the political process and a reason to add their voices in determining the future of this Nation.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you very much. A number of years ago, I helped to raise money for a nonpartisan voter registration drive in the South, in cooperation with the late Dr. King and others and for a relatively small amount of money we had a tremendously effective effort, but the fact is there were terrific barriers which you mentioned in your statement, most of which have now been removed. I hope we can see that there really are no barriers except

the court's requirement that only those really eligible should be able to walk in and vote.

Mr. Wiggins.

Mr. WIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Allen, you have been in the South both before and after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act working to increase the participation in the voting process of blacks in the South. You list on pages 4 and 5 of your prepared testimony some eight reasons why blacks still under participate, as you say-at least, there is a gap of some 12 to 15 points. I have read the eight reasons carefully and it occurs to me that not one of the reasons cited by you would in any way be affected by the legislation we are asked to pass. Would you comment on that?

Mr. ALLEN. I am not sure that I would agree with that point. One of the first reasons, for instance, is that there are no affirmative nonpartisan efforts on the part of the States or on the part of the Federal Government under the implementation of the Voting Rights Act to actively go out and encourage minorities to register and vote. The act, itself, the Voting Rights Act, eliminated some of the barriers, not all of the barriers. But the process of citizenshipeducation, the incentives to the States which is provided in this universal registration bill, would allow them and encourage them for the first time to implement citizenship education programs of their own. I think this would be of tremendous advantage.

Mr. WIGGINS. I think you referred specifically to the voter outreach efforts which would be one of the permissible uses of the Federal funds made available. Do you think it would be permissible for a State to conduct a voter outreach program focused only on blacks?

Mr. ALLEN. The black guy, according to the laws of the States we have reviewed, it would be unlawful in almost all of them. I know of none which have any provision for a special racial outreach program. I am the deputy registrar in Fulton County. Anyone who presents himself can be registered when he presents himself.

Mr. WIGGINS. I take your answer to be it would be difficult to focus an outreach registration effort just for black people.

Mr. MARCUS. There is a need to implement outreach programs that would enable persons who have special problems-say, the black working class have special problems with many of the registration barriers existing, today. Many registration offices are only open during work hours, eight to four, nine to five, with no outreach programs in many of the States in the South. In many, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia counties, for instance, there is no outreach program. They exist only in the metropolitan areas. So we do have classes of citizens who are eligible that have problems as a result of the failure of registrars to reach out and allow them to get involved in the process.

Mr. WIGGINS. I will tell you my concern. Admittedly, it is a partisan concern. The labor unions of America have their own outreach programs. They are called "get out the vote" efforts, and they may spend their treasury money to do that. The labor unions. have never seen fit to spend any significant amount of their money in a Republican district to get out the vote. They spend into the

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