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Since 1900, however, we have not seen even the 70 percent level again. Eight times in this century - including 1972, the first time since 1948 - the turnout has fallen below 60 percent. Twice it fell below 50 percent. Clearly, in spite of the enormous progress that the 20th century has brought us in so many other areas, we have moved backward in the crucial area of voter participation.

The cause is not far too seek. Study after study in recent years has demonstrated that the heart of problem is our archaic system of voter registration. It is no accident that the sharp decline in voter turnout at the beginning of the 20th century coincided with the advent of voter registration legislation.

As historians have shown, the present pattern of voter registration in virtually every State is a legacy of the wave of electoral reform that swept America at the turn of the century. In many States, registration was adopted as a means to end widespred voting frauds and other abuses that marred elections in city after city across the Nation. In others, registration was adopted for the darker purpose of discouraging minorities and other ethnic groups from going to the polls, especially black citizens in the South.

Today, in spite of the enormous progress we have made in so many other areas of public life, we are still using voter registration methods which were, perhaps, sophisticated at the turn of the century, but which are generation out of date today.

In almost every other sphere in which government now operates - at the Federal, State, or local level - it uses the tools of the modern world, especially in the area of communications with the people. But if governments collected taxes the way they register voters today, they would be so bankrupt that revenue-sharing could never bail them out. Why is it that Americans pay their taxes by mail, when they still have to register to vote by methods as obsolete as the Pony Express or the model T?

To paraphrase the famous epigram of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than the fact that it was laid down in the time of William McKinley. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.

There is ample evidence that reform in voter registration is the key to improvement in voter turnout. The figure I have cited - 56 percent voter participation in 1972 - does not tell the whole story. In fact, according to preliminary Census data, of the Americans who were registered to vote in 1972, fully 87 percent went to the polls and cast their ballots on election day.

Put another way, of the 62 million citizens who staved home on election day in 1972, the vast majority were not registered to vote. They could not have voted, even if they had wanted to. Only a samll percentage of those who stayed home on election day were registered to vote.

This is the real lesson for the future. Americans who register are Americans who vote. If our goal is bring America

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to the polls, the place to start is with voter registration.

Again and again, in recent years, detailed studies have demonstrated that the principal factor in the crisis over voter turnout is voter registration, not voter apathy. An extensive study of voting behavior in 104 cities in the 1960 election concluded that registration requirements are a more effective deterrent to voting than anything that normally operates to deter citizens from voting, once they have registered; According to the study, 30 percent of those who have failed to vote in 1960 were disfranchised by the burden of existing registration requirements.

Similar studies on the 1968 election also concluded that the most significant impediment to the exercise of the franchise is the registration requirement. For example, the report of the Freedom To Vote Task Force, published in 1969, found that registration systems posed the most serious single impediment to full participation in the Nation's elections. And, in Texas, a recent study concluded that for every additional month the registration books stay open before election day, an additional 2.7 percent of the population would be registered.

Equally significant is the report last year by the League of Women Voters, entitled "Administrative Obstacles to Voting." The report, issued in the spring of 1972, was based on a study of election practices in hundreds of communities across the Nation during the fall elections of 1971. The report condemns in unmistakable terms the enormous burden that out present system of registration imposes on citizens throughout the country.

In part, of course, the dramatically higher voter turnout in foreign countries is a result of the fact that the United States stands virtually alone among the democratic nations of the world in tolerating a passive role of government in registration, and in basing registration primarily on the initiative of the individual rather than on Government action.

Thus, in Britain, registration officials prepare annual voting lists in each Britian election district, using mail and door-to-door canvass methods.

In Canada, registration officials prepare ad hoc voting lists before each Federal election by making a door-to-door canvass in each polling subdivision in urban areas-cities or town with a population of 5,000 or more-during a 6-day period 7 weeks before the election, with a final revision of the list taking Canada place 2 1/2 weeks before election day. A modified procedure is used for rural areas. Before the June 1968 election, for example, 81,000 Canadian officials registered 11 million citizens - 98 percent of the eligible voters - at a cost of approximately 7.5 million of slightly less than 69 cents a voter. If this Canadian experience could be extrpolated to the United States, the cost of a similar registration canvass would be approximately $100 million.

But, in large part, the higher voter turnout in nations like Britain and Canada is also due to the unreasonable burdens

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that our "individual initiative" system imposes on citizens attempting to register. Instead of an "individual initiative" system, our system might more appropriately be called a "law of the jungle" or a "survival of the fittest" system.

In State after State we see the chaos and complexity and confusion in our present reigistration system. Whenever we look, we find that registration is an obstacle course for the voter, instead of the easy path to the polls it ought to be.

The defects of the present system are not confined to any State or geographic region. They go by names like early closing deadlines, unreasonable purges of voting rolls, unfair re-registration requirements, inaccessible registration offices, and lack of absentee registration. The burdens are almost endless:

In some States, registration closes months before the election. A recent study cited 15 States in which the registration books closed more than a month before the election. Often, the closing date is much earlier. Such early closing deadlines serve no legitimate administrative purpose. In 1968 in Idaho, for example, the registration books were closed only two days before the election, and 72 percent of the eligible voters cast their ballots on election day.

In many of the Nation's cities and counties, there is no real local registration ofiice. The only place a citizen can register to vote is at city hall or at the central downtown office of the board of elections.

In other cities. the problem is even worse. The only place to register may be the county courthouse outside the city limits.

In thousands of rural areas, registration means a long and time-counsuming journey into town.

For millions of residents in communites like these, the inconvenience of a trip downtown or out of town or into town is an insurmountable battier to registration. Often, the expense of the trip or the loss of income of time away from the job is sufficient by itself to inhibit registration - in effect, a tax that denies the right to vote as surely as the outlawed poll tax used to do.

For millions of the Nations's elderly, disabled, or sick - those who simply do not have the physical ability to travel to the registration office to register in person - the lack of effective procedure for absentee registration means that they are denied the right to vote at all.

And those who find their way to the registration office often learn that their problems have just begun. Often, the office is open only an hour or two a day, or a day or two a week. Sometimes, it may be necessary to make an appointment in advance. Other times, the registrar simply shuts the office early, if no applicants arrive that day. In still other cases, all but the most determined voters give up the face of the endless lines and waiting periods they find inside the door of the registration office.

Such examples are legion. The ones I have cited could be multiplied many times over. They are found in [almost?] every State. But they are enough, I think, to identify the problem and to