"I'm glad Georgia is first in something at last. I'm tired of us always being at the tail end," chortled plump, bouncy Governor Ellis G. Arnall.* A good many U.S. citizens, including Eleanor Roosevelt, had been arguing that if 18 is a soldiering age, it is also a voting age. Bills calling for the change were before 31 state legislatures, introduced in both the national House and Senate this year..But Georgia's Arnall, only 36 himself, made vote-at-18 something of a personal crusade.
In his tough campaign against hillbilly-ish Eugene Talmadge last year, no Arnall supporters were more effective than college students infuriated by the Talmadge purge of the State's universities. Too young to vote, they worked on their parents, hounded local political leaders, burned Gene Talmadge in effigy all over the State. Once elected, Arnall reciprocated by pushing an amendment to the State Constitution that would lower the voting age from 21 to 18 relieve the new voters of a $1 poll .. (When they became 21, they would begin to pay it.) Chief opposition came from Talmadge and his Vigilantes, the nightshirters and the "wool-hat boys" (small farmers) who hate everything connected with Arnall.
Last week, by a 2-to-1 majority, Georgia citizens voted the amendment into their Constitution, thus giving the vote not only to Seaman Cranford but to 85,000 girls, who cannot serve their country in the armed forces until they are 20.
Said Governor Arnall, announcing that the Georgia delegation would demand a vote-at-18 plan in the '44 Democratic platform: "[Young voters] will look to me for leadership. . . ." He had reason to boast: he had made thousands of Talmadge-hating youngsters a permanent part of the electorate.
* The Governor was a shade too self-conscious about his State. Among the 48 States, Georgia ranks eighth from the bottom in illiteracy, fourth from the bottom in wealth per capita, and second from the bottom in its lynching record. Outstanding Mississippi ranks third, first, first.