American youth stormed on the national political scene in 1968 with galvanic gusto. Yet for all their efforts, both creative and disruptive, the young dissidents remained on the outside looking in on the American political process. For the most part, they were not old enough to back up their beliefs with ballots. Now, displaying the same kinetic enthusiasm that the kids did during the campaign, a youthful movement called LUV ("Let Us Vote") is spear heading a drive to amend the Constitution to enfranchise 18-year-olds.
A National Coalition. Next week, forming a coalition aimed at attaining those goals, LUV plans to join with the National Education Association, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Student Association, the national Young Republican and Young Democratic clubs, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the U.S.
Youth Council. Though other groups have tried in the past to lower the voting age in individual states, the coalition will mark the first time that students will have merged with other interest groups to achieve the goal on a national basis.
LUV's founder and moving spirit is Dennis Warren, 21, a prelaw student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. The very antithesis of the stereotype student radical, Warren wears his hair closely cropped, dresses in conservative pinstripe suits and black shoes. As a sophomore, he won two gold medals at the Pi Kappa Delta national debating tournament.
Warren uses all of his forensic skills as he goes about advocating the lowered voting age. Only four states now allow voting before age 21: Georgia and Kentucky at 18, Alaska at 19 and Hawaii at 20. Yet, contends Warren, "the average age of those who fight and die in war is under 21. These men and women rightfully deserve a voice in selecting the government that determines whether there should be a war."
In the six weeks since he organized LUV, Warren has seen it expand from a campus-wide drive at his own college into a nationwide movement that now has 327 college chapters and 3,000 high school divisions. More than 20,000 letters inquiring about LUV have flooded into Warren's busy headquarters on the Stockton campus. Only three of these have been critical—and only one contained a contribution, for $1.23.
Reforms Proposed. LUV's labors are coming at a time when support is gathering for broad-based reform of the nation's electoral process, including lowering the voting age and abolishing the Electoral College Richard Nixon repeatedly advocated lowering the voting-age requirement during the campaign, and both Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen are on record as supporting the move. Recently, Mansfield and Vermont's Senator George D. Aiken co-sponsored a resolution to lower the voting age to 18 and introduce a system of direct election that would put the President in office for a six-year term. Last week the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments began to review proposed alternatives to the Electoral College formula.