majority will vote for candidates one and two, who acquire many more votes than they need; that these votes are, in effect, wasted; and candidates three through six are thereby elected or could be elected by a minority. This provision is designed to say that, if, in any district, more than one person is to be elected, there can be no gimmick by which every voter will not be permitted to vote for every, seat to be filled.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Will the gentleman yield at this point?

Mr. CRALEY. Yes.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mrs. Van Cleve, wouldn't it straighten it out if we just repeated the word "district" in that sentence. In other words it now reads "that every voter in any district election shall be permitted to vote for the whole number of persons to be elected in that election." I think that has caused the confusion here, because we are thinking of somebody in ward 11, or whatever you call it, district 11, voting for somebody, if we put in that district election. I think it would spell it out.

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. I believe that would meet the problem correctly; yes.

Mr. BURTON. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CRALEY. I yield.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Chairman, this construction has been bothering me, like it has my friend, Mr. Craley. Do you really have a district election? I want to ask that. Aren't these people likely to be elected in a general election? Ir you are going to vote for a Governor of Guam, aren't you likely to be electing a legislature at the same time, and to say this is a district election may cause some complications.

I was going to recommend, Mr. Chairman, that Mrs. Van Cleve think it over a bit, and maybe come up with some different wording and if the gentleman will yield further, I would say that the way this bill is written we really don't have much assurance of what kind of legislature we are going to have in Guam.

For instance, I could ask you, Will there be at-large seats? Will there be 21 districts? Will there be 15 or would there be 12? I don't think anybody can answer that. The Secretary, too, Mr. Chairman, here in his statement says the enactment of this bill would, "guarantee appropriate representation to all geographic areas." How do we know it would?

is

Mr. O'BRIEN. If the gentleman will yield, I think our difficulty

Mr. BURTON. There is nothing in the bill, Mr. Chairman, that says a man has to be a resident in the district from which he is elected. They could install a British system. You could have 15 or 20 people elected from Naha and assign them a district. There are all sorts of possibilities here.

Mr. O'BRIEN. What we are trying to do, if the gentleman will yield, in 1950 we said to the people of Guam that you must elect your legislators at large, and we did that because there weren't any stable-let me describe it as "stable"-districts. Correct?

Mr. BURTON. Yes.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Now, we are saying we are not telling them how to do it, but if you don't like it at large, if you want to move in and do it as a district plan, as we have in most of the States for legislators, then you may do it with certain safeguards, somewhat limited in

number. It could be that they will decide it is all right to go along with what they have now.

Mr. BURTON. That may very well be true and, if that is the case, we are not doing what the Secretary says here, providing "more adequately for representation of the minority." You are not doing that, and you don't guarantee, as the Secretary says we are going to, "guarantee appropriate representation to all geographic areas," and there is nothing in here about residency.

Mr. O'BRIEN. No; but if the gentleman will yield, this legislation doesn't guarantee that, but it gives the opportunity, which the Legislature of Guam now lacks, to provide better recognition for the minorities.

Mr. BURTON. Yes, sir; I understand that. But I am just pointing out to the chairman that the language that the Secretary uses in his statement, as I read the bill, is incorrect.

Mrs. REID. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CRALEY. I yield. Go ahead.

Mrs. REID. The one sentence you read, Mr. Burton, line 5, on page 2-I would like to ask Mrs. Van Cleve if perhaps line 7, instead of "elections," use the word "districts." Would that clarify it?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. I believe that would be helpful, but it does give rise to the problem that Mr. Burton discussed of apparently suggesting that the elections for the legislature are to be held at a time other than the general election, and certainly this was not intended. It would be expected that the legislature and the Governor and any other officials to be elected would all be elected at the general election, as they have been in the past.

I would be glad, the Interior Department generally would be glad, to look at this again to avoid the kinds of ambiguities with which you are concerned. I would say with respect, Mr. Burton, to the several questions with which you began your recital of a moment ago, the answer, to all save one, is indeed that the bill does not make provision for this. It was frankly not intended to. As the chairman has suggested, the purpose of the bill with the essentially single guarantee of being sure that the constitutional rules are met, would pass this responsibility to the Guam Legislature.

This is in keeping with our general view that the legislature can sensibly cope with this.

The one question which is answered affirmatively has to do with your first question, which was, I believe, whether some members could still continue to be elected at large. I don't believe that would be possible under H.R. 13294. I believe that once the districting technique is adopted, then there could be no further at-large elections within Guam.

Mr. BURTON. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. CRALEY. Yes.

Mr. BURTON. Mrs. Van Cleve, I would like to respect fully recommend that the Department of Interior take another look at that whole section on page 2 of the bill because I do believe that one of the purposes of representation is to insure that minority groups, smaller groups, do have an opportunity to voice themselves and to have some representation, if possible, This can only be done through a geographic districting. I am speaking now as a Representative from the State of Utah, and if you had the Congress elected at large,

I would never be here. And Utah would never have a Representative, and the only reason that the gentleman now in the chair is here Mr. Rivers is because we have this geographic requirement.

Mr. BURTON. In my study of the Constitution, as I recall, there is nothing that makes the member be a resident of the district that elects him. But custom pretty well demands this. I think in Guam it would just come about naturally that the people would be running from the district. I am just wondering if we shouldn't drop this word "district" election because looking down the road now, we are going to let them elect their Governor. This is really going to be a general election, and to throw in the word "district," I think, as my friend says, merely confuses it. I would like to see this geographic representation that the Secretary mentioned be guaranteed.

That is all. Thank you.

Mr. ANDERSON. Mr. Chairman, I recognize that we have some weaknesses here, and with your permission, we would like to take another crack at this redrafting.

Mr. RIVERS. We would like to have you submit the suggested clarifications or substitute language so we can have that available at our markup session. But we are not going to call an additional session. We want the benefit of your advice without another hearing. So bring us your suggested clarifications, if that is all right with you.

Now while we are on this, I would like to ask Mrs. Van Cleve about the difference in the bill introduced by Mr. O'Brien, H.R. 13294, and that introduced by Mr. Craley, H.R. 13298.

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. So far as we have been able to establish in the very few minutes that were available for us to compare these bills before the hearing, Mr. Rivers, it appears to us that the only substantive distinction is that under Mr. Craley's bill it would appear to be possible to perpetuate some members on an at-large basis, while the remainder would be districted, whereas under ours, no at-large candidates would be possible.

Mr. RIVERS. I observe that is 21 members specified in Mr. O'Brien's bill, and there is no 21 specified in Mr. Craley's bill. Is that another difference?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. I think not. I believe the 21 provision in our bill is simply a repetition of existing law, and that the portion which Mr. Craley's bill would amend is subject to that 21 provision.

Mr. RIVERS. And the 21 provision still prevails under existing law and Mr. Craley's proposed amendment wouldn't affect that. Mrs. VAN CLEVE. That is right.

Mr. RIVERS. So we arrive at the same result with the two bills. Mrs. VAN CLEVE. That is right.

Mr. RIVERS. The only difference, the way you understand Mr. Craley's bill, there could be some member or members at-large instead of all of them being districted?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. That was our recent and very quick construction.
Mr. RIVERS. I yield to the member from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CRALEY. Will the chairman yield at that point?

This is not my interpretation of the bill H.R. 13298. Basically in reading H.R. 13294, based on line 5, page 2, I had come to the conclusion that you were permitting people to elect all the candidates but specifying that they do so just by district. My legislation is quite similar to yours, but with this exception. You will notice that

where you start on line 5, "That every voter in any district election shall be permitted," et cetera, I say, "every voter within a district shall be permitted to vote for the whole number of persons to be elected in that district in those elections." So I specifically attempted to preclude somebody voting for all candidates, but merely doing it by districts as opposed to my legislation which would allow them to vote for only the candidates in their district. This, Mr. Chairman, was the intent of H.R. 13298, to limit an elector to voting for candidates within his own district and only his district.

Mr. RIVERS. Thank you.

I will say to the chairman that we have asked for an explanation of the difference between these two bills, and Mr. Craley has said, and Mrs. Van Cleve has said about the only difference in the total effect is Mr. Craley's bill might allow some members at-large?

Mr. CRALEY. No, I differ with this. I said it doesn't allow members to run at large, but it restricts them to electing members from their district only.

Mr. RIVERS. Persons being elected in that district in that election could be partially elected in that district, even if they were running at large in all of Guam. So that is an ambiguity, too. It means elected in that district or partially elected in that district? Does the elected include the partial?

Mr. CRALEY. They have to be a candidate for election within a district.

Mr. RIVERS. You are saying that by inference no one can run at large?

Mr. CRALEY. Right. I differ with Mrs. Van Cleve.

Mr. RIVERS. I said Mr. Anderson and Mrs. Van Cleve may submit their clarifications for a markup session.

Mr. O'BRIEN (presiding). I am just curious. I know what the problem is confronting Mrs. Van Cleve. She is looking over her shoulder at the Virgin Islands. I think if we hadn't had that difficulty there that we wouldn't have this language which is bothering us here, because we wouldn't have been aware of the problem. But I am for home rule, and I think that has been evident, but on the other hand there are times where we should step in. Why, if we are getting away from the at large, which obviously is not desired by people of Guam at this time, why don't we just provide for districting instead of just the authority to district? Why don't we provide that the members of the legislature shall be elected by districts?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. That, Mr. Chairman, was essentially what we were attempting to do in the bill which we submitted as a drafting service. If I understand your question correctly, you are not, I believe, asking whether it would be desirable for the Congress to draw the lines.

Mr. O'BRIEN. Oh, no.

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. Because that is a different question, as I see it, and we haven't answered it.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I see. We do provide in one of the bills—I looked at the wrong bill, too. We do provide specifically in one of the bills that they shall be elected in legislative districts, but we don't spell out the legislative district, nor do we say that not more than one person may be elected from any specific district.

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. That is correct.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I suppose the reason for that is, in Guam, because of its comparatively small size that you could have a concentration of population within one district in such a way that it would be difficult to district within that area?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. It was that eventuality which this language was designed to cope with.

Mr. O'BRIEN. I don't envy the Legislature of Guam this job. Maybe they are lucky that they are getting to it after the rest of us; but, if the pattern of what has developed in the last year or two is to extend to Guam, the legislature won't reapportion, the courts will. So it will be academic. We have more judges running around these days with rulers and pieces of paper and census figures and as I said yesterday I am just curious to see whether they will do a better job than the politicans. I doubt it. But that is a personal opinion.

Well, as I understand it, then, we left this situation where we are going to try to see if we can't come up with some other language. Is that correct?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. We will be glad to submit to you language which will be an improvement upon that contained in 13294.

Mr. CRALEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question of the witnesses? Mr. O'BRIEN. Yes, surely.

Mr. CRALEY. And I am going to ask this question of all witnesses so the rest of you who are in the room, you might bear it in mind. Is your intent to (1) provide for a maximum of 21 representatives in the legislature, and (2) to provide for districts and I don't specify 21 but I say districts, and (3) to provide for election of candidates from specific districts?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. All three of those are our purposes.

Mr. CRALEY. I will ask this same question of the other witnesses from the territory.

Thank you.

Mr. SKUBITZ. Mr. Chairman, I have one question. Mrs. Van Cleve, if we are to discontinue at-large elections, don't you think there should be some provision in this bill that would provide that the representative should at least reside in the district that elects him?

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. It would be our preference, frankly, to leave that matter for the judgment of the local legislature. As Mr. Burton noted a few moments ago, there is no requirement of residence with respect to congressional district in this House. Yet there has obviously developed a practice with which you are far more familiar than I. We would hope and expect the same results to come to pass in Guam and would believe that there is no need for the Congress to legislate on this subject.

Mr. SKUBITZ. I have never been to Guam but it seems to me this is one protection that ought to be written into the law so that each district will be represented by someone who at least resides in the district and knows the problems of that district.

Mrs. VAN CLEVE. I would say that this is not an issue about which we feel very strongly. Our genuine preference, as you have gathered, is to vest in the legislature as much authority to make decisions of this sort as possible. At the same time, we would, of course, have no difficulty with this committee's making certain of those judgments for it.