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Show I ; ! A Uangerous Short Cut? We note the passage of legislation by the Congress of the United Slates for the 18-year-old vote with some grave reset vat ions. To be sure, several public opinion polls claimed to show that a great majority favored lowering the voting age. But in actual tests at. the one place it counts the ballot box the record show that in individual State action, the 18-year-old vote has been rejected. Only two states lowered the voting age: Georgia, in 1943, and Kentucky, Ken-tucky, in 19-35. In Alaska the voting age is (or has been) 19 since the state entered the union in 1959. In that same year, Hawaii became a member of the Union with an established voting age of 20. Illinois will bring the matter before a Const itutioal Convention Conven-tion in November. Since the peoples of the various States have decided decid-ed that a maturity of 21 years should be required to vote in State elections and on matters effecting State legislation, by what token are those under 21 qualified to vote in national elections? Should not the matter have been referred by to the States, in the form of a Constitutional Amendment, rather than by legislative action of the Congress? Maybe the people do want the 18-year-old vote now; if they do, should not the people have been given the opportunity opportu-nity to vote on the matter, through ratification of a constitutional amendment bv three Quarters of the states? I "Power in the People." was a conservative watchword watch-word long before the phrase was picked up by knuc-kleheaded knuc-kleheaded radicals, some of whom, we are convinced, haven't the foggiest notion that the words mean. The most vital amendments to the Constitution are the ninth and tenth, which declare that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated dele-gated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively to the people." These amendments amend-ments were adopted by our founding fathers to severely se-verely restrict and confine the powers of a national government. Too long have encroachments on the Constitution been going the other way. |