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of the room and watch. At three o'clock
these same people who were waving the
flag last week and screaming about pres-
suring and lobbying and counting of noses,
said that they had at three o'clock this
afternoon 71 of your votes in their back
pocket for the age of 19, and a little while
ago they claimed they had 83 of your votes
in their back pocket on the age of 19.
All I can tell you is that I think it is
pretty funny myself. Remember Harry
Truman versus Tom Dewey, because Time
magazine thought they had some votes
counted also, and they even printed a
couple of thousand copies of their maga-
zine with Tom Dewey's picture on the
front before they realized that the fight
was not over by any means.
So I am going to assume that unless
you all get up and walk out on me, which
1 hope you will not, you have open minds
on this question, and you will not let the
minority or your children at home tell you
how to vote on this issue.
Let us keep in mind that the Constitu-
tional Convention Commission worked on
these same problems for two years, and
they came up with the age of 21, which was
nothing new, because since medieval times
this has been the voting age. In this
country it has been good for 200 years,
not since 1807 as the majority report
points out, but really since the beginning
of this nation.
1 say the job of proving the case is
really not our job. The job is that of the
majority, the majority of eight, to prove
a case for a change. I sat through the
same testimony, in fact, I sat through all of
the testimony in the Committee, and I heard
no real reasons given, other than some
which bordered on an attempt to get to
your heart, rather than to your mind. But
let us keep in mind the first part of what
Delegate Price said the other night, not
the last part.
Remember when he said that real civili-
zation was in the development of the sci-
ences, but not of the philosophies by any
means. He told you about the ancient
philosophers that he considered to be a
lot more intelligent than our people today.
I will sum up my feeling. You know,
when they talked about the hundred years
wars in the old books, a couple of thousand
men would get up on the battlefield by
prearrangement, and after the first three
horses were killed they would all go home
and talk about it.
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Today the job of the warrior is how
many people he can kill all at one time.
So Delegate Price told a lot of philosophy
in a couple of words the other night, and
I hope we will all heed this when we talk
about whether our people are really more
educated today than they were in the old
days.
Now, there has been a reduction in the
voting age in Georgia since 1943, and yet
there is nothing to substantiate from their
record the move to lower the vote here, or
in the record of Kentucky since 1955. You
can glean nothing from their record which
would indicate that we should reduce our
age limit.
Now, please keep in mind .through this
discussion that we are not talking about
woman suffrage; we are not talking about
this type of suffrage at all. What we are
talking about is a delay in voting, and
not an attempt to keep anyone from vot-
ing permanently. This is not the question
here at all.
The question here is whether or not we
should advance the age by two years.
Eventually these same people are going to
vote, whether you make it 16, 25, or 21.
These people are going to vote. Let us at
least keep that in mind as we discuss this
issue.
The majority makes a strong point on
the question of participation. There are a
lot of ways to participate in a campaign
besides voting. Many people get their first
taste of politics and their first taste of
government by actually working in a cam-
paign headquarters, by distributing ballots,
by listening to candidates and by doing a
lot of door-to-door surveying and cam-
paigning. I would say to you that in many
instances they know more about the candi-
dates, and they know more about the
issues, and they know more about how
politics is run, than many of the older
people, so that there are ways of participat-
ing in a campaign other than just voting.
There was some talk in the committee
about relieving frustrations by voting. I
notice that issue has been practically
dropped by this time.
The majority also makes a point of the
fact that only 125 people will be added to
the registers, but 125 people is a consider-
able block when we consider the fact that
many of these people can be concentrated
in small areas, that is in a county or in a
city where a university or a college is
located.
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