Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for convening this hearing, and for allowing me to testify on Senate bill 1789, the "Regi

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onal Presidential Selection Act" that I have introduced with Senator Joe Lieberman. I appreciate this opportunity for the Senate and American public to review our proposal to bring much-needed reform and structure to the presidential selection process.

The Nonsensical Traditions of First-in-the-Nation Status for New Hampshire and Iowa

Our Presidential nominating system is truly one of our nation's most bizarre rituals. The flaws in our current system are obvious to every citizen: it is arbitrary, confusing and undermines the ideal of equal participation in the electoral process by allowing certain states, year after year, a disproportionate influence on the final election. This unequal balance of power compromises the integrity of the nominating process. Nonsensical traditions of presidential candidates posing for photographs in Iowa cornfields and eating doughnuts in New Hampshire diners are not a proper manner in which to select the Leader of the Free World.

To the residents of Iowa and New Hampshire, their states' first-in-the-nation status is heralded as the noblest example of our democratic-republic at work: candidates campaigning door-to-door, town-to-town engaging in personal conversations with individual voters. The proper question to be asked is, why must Iowa and New Hampshire perennially be first-in-the-nation? Parochial interests respond by proclaiming, to quote a column⁽¹⁾ in New Hampshire's Manchester Union Leader, "We've earned it." By what means has this advantaged status been earned? This same column explains it is because of New Hampshire's high voter turnout, which it observes stands in contrast with Iowa whose caucus system "caters to relatively few political activists." The column proudly calculates that 207,211 people voted in the 1996 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary. This fact hardly bolsters New Hampshire's advantaged status as being the nation's first primary. To the contrary, it raises the fact that the populations of New Hampshire and Iowa are relatively small, homogenous, and unrepresentative of our nation as a whole in virtually every demographic measure.

The Manchester Union Leader column I cited offers several insightful, more realistic and less romantic reasons for why New Hampshire holds the first-in-the-nation primary:

"You can measure its worth in terms of dollars and cents, if you'd like. The figures are impressive. It generated an estimated $32 million in the hotel and restaurant industry in 1996 and brought in $2.5 million in state Rooms and Meals Tax revenue. Its overall economic impact, according to New Hampshire Division of Economic Development Director Norman V. Storss, was $80 million. Every four years, it helps car rental agencies, printers, advertising agencies, dry cleaners, sandwich shops and gas stations. And it makes a local politician or two nationally famous for backing a winner or loser.

...."And, let's face it, although we take pride in the 'higher calling' aspect of the primary, we also like being put on the map, as it were, quadrennially. 'You may be able to figure out the immediate economic impact but you can't measure the national publicity that New Hampshire gets,' says William Bartlett, a former state Senate President and former Commissioner of Resources and Economic Development."

New Hampshire's defense of its first-in-the-nation status is less about retail campaigning than it is a four-year economic and tourism development program. New Hampshire's leaders spend considerable time and expend considerable effort ensuring that no other states steal their spotlight and influx of campaign spending: New Hampshire has a state law requiring its primary to be held seven days before any other state's, and a separate state law allowing the New Hampshire Secretary of State to hold the election in December of the year prior to the presidential election in order to be first. This year, New Hampshire has demanded that presidential candidates sign a pledge declaring their allegiance to protecting its first-in-the-nation primary. This is the text of the pledge to which every Presidential candidate ascribed:

"I pledge (or "Although I am not currently a candidate for President, if I decide to enter the race I pledge that...) I will not campaign or allow declarations of my candidacy to be filed in any state that holds its presidential primary earlier than 7 days following the New Hampshire Primary, as provided by New Hampshire law (RSA 653:9)."

A bipartisan group of New Hampshire leaders explained the purpose of this pledge in a published commentary entitled "Preserving the NH Primary,"⁽²⁾ in which they recite the familiar portrayal of their state as a,

"beacon of old fashioned, person to person, retail campaigning. In New Hampshire, voters meet the Presidential candidates up close and personal. ...We force them to discuss the real issues,"

while in the same breath state that they hope those candidates who had not yet signed the pledge,

"will reconsider their position, and we trust New Hampshire voters will let those candidates know how important the seven-day window is to our law and tradition. The New Hampshire primary is worth preserving. We call on all Presidential candidates to sign the New Hampshire Presidential Primary pledge, and we encourage New Hampshire citizens to keep it in mind when they are considering potential candidates for President."

This is not a pledge, it is a threat veiled in "person to person...real issues" rhetoric. The candidates to be our next President ought not to be bullied into pledging their acquiescence to forever allow New Hampshire to hold the nation's first primary, and be subject to ballot-box retribution if they do not submit.

Front-loading: New Hampshire and Iowa's Advantaged Status Prompts Race For Early Primaries

The attention lavished on New Hampshire and Iowa by candidates and the media, and the extent to which these two states will go to protect their advantaged status, not only highlights the need for uniformity and clear guidelines in the selection process, but it has created a situation in which the other 48 states are competing for an early position in the nominating process.

A 1999 Associated Press news story⁽³⁾ detailed the acuteness of the front-loading phenomenon:

"About half the states, representing three-fourths of party convention delgates, will hold primaries and caucuses between the end of January and March 14 - long before most voters start paying attention to the November election.

The trend is a recent one.

When the New Hampshire primary started in 1952, about 13 percent of Democratic convention delegates were chosen by week four of the primary schedule. That figure held steady for nearly 30 years.

In 1980, the percentage rose to 22 percent. It climbed to 27 percent in 1984, 42 percent in 1988, and 44 percent in 1996.

On the Republican side, 17 percent of delegates were picked by the fourth week in the 1952 schedule. That climbed to 20 percent in 1980, 24 percent in 1984, 49 percent in 1988 and 51 percent in 1996."

After reviewing past presidential election primary and caucus calendars, the Congressional Research Service concluded that

"the 2000 calendar is the most front-loaded ever with respect to the number of delegates at stake...[as] 70% to 80% of the delegates needed to claim the nomination in either party were allocated as a result of March 7 voting. As it happened, the contest for the nomination on both sides was declared over in the press by March 7, by which time voters in fewer than half the states had cast ballots. But by March 14 - only a week later - front-loading would have resulted in Democratic events in a total of 30 states; Republican events in 32."⁽⁴⁾

Considering the New Hampshire primary was held on February 1^st, this is an extremely condensed schedule, and one that was haphazardly created by individual states all trying to hold an early event so their voters are not completely shut-out of the process. The 2000 Presidential General Election is well underway, and a significant number of states have yet to hold their primaries, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and New Jersey, which are all represented by members of this Committee.

It is not merely by choice that some states hold events later in the calendar. For an example of the effects of front-loading, I need to look no further than my home state of Washington. In 1996, Washington held its primary on March 26^th. The Washington State Legislature passed legislation in 1999 moving the 2000 primary forward nearly a full month to February 29^th. The Democratic National Committee, however, denied the requests of Washington, Arizona, Michigan and South Carolina to move their events to February citing its rules to protect the status of New Hampshire. Actually, the DNC did not deny the states' requests, but had the states gone forward with their plans they would have been severely penalized in the number of delegates they would be allowed at the party's nominating convention. The Washington State Democratic Party was forced to abide by the DNC's demands, and Washington's early primary was a mere beauty contest on the Democrat side. Washington Democrat Party Chair Paul Berendt responded to the DNC decision by saying "Quite frankly its bad news. I'm terribly disappointed that they rejected this, but this tradition of giving special privileges to Iowa and New Hampshire runs deep." Mr. Berendt concluded that "there needs to be an overhaul of the process."⁽⁵⁾ Washington's Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a Republican, said that "Until Congress brings reason to this chaos, we're going to continue to have problems."⁽⁶⁾

"The Regional Presidential Selection Act," Senate bill 1789

Senator Lieberman and I have proposed legislation to create a rotating, regional system that will repair our nation's presidential selection process. Our proposal would assign states into four regions comprised of 12-13 states from the same geographic area: the West, Midwest, Northeast and South. All states in a region will hold primaries or caucuses on the same date either the first Tuesday in March, April, May, or June. No region will vote in the same month. The order in which each region votes will rotate with each presidential election cycle, allowing each region to have the opportunity to be the first, second, third, and last region in the country to vote. Each state could choose to hold a primary or caucus. The bill would be effective for the presidential election in 2004 and every election thereafter.

This proposal would replace the current haphazard selection process, with a system that has structure and allows for equal participation by the voters of all states and regions of the country. States could focus their energy on encouraging citizens to participate in the process rather than jockeying for a better position on the calendar. Candidates would be able to address issues important to the nation as a whole or those of significance to regions of the country, rather than perennially catering to the views of the same narrow constituencies. Most importantly, voters in every state will have an equal opportunity to participate. In New Hampshire, voters expect to have the next President knock on the front door of their home. In other states, the nominations are decided before voters go to the polls - they are lucky if candidates find time to swing through the airport, much less show-up on their doorstep.

Senator Lieberman and I have put forward a reasonable, responsible, and workable plan. Yet we are not alone in recognizing the need for reform; nor is our plan the only one to be proposed. Since the introduction of the primary election, approximately 300 different bills have been introduced in the Senate and House of Representatives.⁽⁷⁾ There is currently a bill in the House that is a slight twist on our regional system proposal. All fifty members of the National Association of Secretaries of State have backed a regional selection plan that is different from our plan in only two significant respects: implementation is assumed to be accomplished through independent legislative action in all fifty states, and New Hampshire and Iowa are allowed to retain their advantaged status. The Republican National Committee has a commission studying the issue, and the Democratic National Committee has been holding hearings into the need for change. In newspaper editorial pages and other media outlets, there has been a noticeable increase in critical examinations of the existing mess of a selection process and, subsequently, calls for reform.

Congress' Constitutional Authority to Reform

Having noted that state officials and the national political parties are engaged in efforts of varying degrees to review the current selection process and determine whether to institute some reforms in their realm of influence, it is appropriate to address a question that some raise about the "Regional Presidential Selection Act": does Congress have the constitutional authority to regulate presidential primaries and caucuses? As a former state attorney general, I am absolutely confident that Congress has the constitutional prerogative to direct the presidential election process. The Constitution clearly grants Congress the authority to regulate the time, place and manner of federal elections.

Were a constitutional challenge to be brought against the rotating, regional selection process that Senator Lieberman and I propose on the grounds that it infringes on states' rights or the freedom of association rights of the parties, I believe the Supreme Court would properly rule that the regional process does not place an undue burden on the states and that the federal government has compelling reasons for establishing the regional system - the most important of which is ensuring all voters are allowed equal participation in the process.

This is clearly a federal question: who should be our nation's President. The President is the only individual who represents the entire country and it is entirely appropriate that the federal government establish a reasonable structure to ensure a fair, equitable selection process.

To those who express concern over the impact of a regional presidential selection process on federalism or the rights of the states, I would simply observe that it is quite clear the states are not able to make independent decisions on the staging of their primaries or caucuses - New Hampshire and Iowa are entrenched and have a stranglehold on the rights of every other state in the Union. Only the federal government can restore needed balance.

Conclusion

I will conclude my testimony by commending this Committee for focusing attention on the process by which this nation elects our President. It has been remarked to me on more than one occasion that the idea Senator Lieberman and I have proposed makes too much common sense to be considered by Congress. I hope this hearing proves that Congress takes seriously the need for real change in how we select our President, and that this hearing is merely the first step towards passage of reform legislation.

America deserves a presidential election system that is representative and fair to all citizens in every state. The election of our President should be guided by nothing less that a system true to the ideals of democracy and fairness upon which this nation was founded.

1. "Quadrennial Event is 'Uniquely New Hampshire," Manchester Union Leader, John Distaso.

2. "Preserving the NH Primary", Manchester Union Leader, NH Secretary of State Bill Gardner, former NH Governor Hugh Gregg, former chairman of the NH Democratic Party Joe Keefe, chairman of the NH Republican Party Steve Duprey, and chairman of the NH Democratic Party Jeff Woodburn, 1/19/99.

3. Associated Press, Melissa B. Robinson, 11/29/99.

4. "Presidential Nominating Process: Current Issues and Legislation in the 106^th Congress", Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, #RS20510, Kevin Coleman, 3/21/2000.

5. Quoted from "Democrats Reject Early Washington Primary", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Robert Gavin, 10/23/99.

6. "Despite DNC ruling, Washington's Feb. 29 primary to go on as planned", Associated Press, Hunter T. George, 10-23-99.

7. "Presidential Nominating Process: Current Issues and Legislation in the 106^th Congress", Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, #RS20510, Kevin Coleman, 3/21/2000.