Presidential Lottery Read Free Page A

the breaking point. I expected a deal.
    In what I say next I speak only for myself, but I understand that other electors, both Republican and Democratic, were of similar mind. I found the idea of permitting one man to dictate who our next President should be so repugnant, eventhough it was legal, that I spent some time in late October tracking down a newspaper article I remembered having read prior to the conventions. I found it. It referred to a joint statement made on July 17, 1968, by Representatives Charles E. Goodell, Republican of New York, and Morris K. Udall, Democrat of Arizona. They proposed that the two major parties agree, in the event of the election’s being thrown into the House, that congressmen would pledge to vote for whichever candidate had won the popular vote, thus nullifying Wallace’s capacity to dictate the election. It was a good plan, an honorable one, a plan that would have risen to the occasion of a national crisis.
    But observe that Governor Wallace had anticipated just such a move; he intended not to let the election reach the House. He intended to settle the matter his own way in the Electoral College. And I intended to forestall him … also in the Electoral College.
    As soon as it became certain that Nixon had failed to win the required 270 electoral votes, and when it was known that the election was therefore vulnerable to dictatorship by Wallace, I intended to inform all Republican and Democratic electors that I was interested in a plan whereby we would decide the election in the College between Nixon and Humphrey and not risk domination by Wallace. Rather than allow one man to dictate who our President should be, I thought it better for the nation that the two parties decide between themselves what an honorable compromise might be and then encourage their Electoral College members to swing enough votes to either Nixon or Humphrey to secure his election.
    I realize the gravity of what I have just said, and I realized it at the time. I was proposing to install my judgment over tradition, and no man who knows history ever does that lightly. I was impelled by three clear motives. First, what I proposed was legal. There was absolutely nothing in law that forbade the maneuver I intended; indeed, the founders of our nation had expected that electors would behave precisely as I was proposing and only custom had developed a plan calling for their automatic subservience. Second, I was in no way personally pledged to any course of action, either by written oath, or spoken, or implied. I was as free an agent as a man could be. The Constitution required me only to act in conformance to its laws and my own good judgment, and this I proposed to do. Third, I was a loyal Democrat who had spoken till his voice was hoarse in defense of Humphrey when others had deserted him, and I had done my part in helping to keep Pennsylvania in the Democratic column. I was totally committed to a Democratic victory and I knew that if we could somehow wangle the election into the House we had a chance of winning there, but I also knew that Governor Wallace would do everything he could to forestall that; the chances of the election’s going to the House were remote and probably nonexistent.
    I was fortified in my conclusions by a conviction that grew each day: if I was able to see this problem so clearly, others of like mind must be seeing it too. I was convinced that across the nation potential electors in every state were weighing the same alternatives that I was and were reaching the same conclusions. If, as seemed unlikely, Humphrey were to winthe popular vote and lead in the Electoral College vote, I felt certain that Republican electors would prefer to see their party and mine settle this matter between ourselves rather than subject our candidates to the pressures that Governor Wallace might apply.
    I did not then communicate my ideas to any other potential elector, for three reasons. First, I knew who none of them