Daily Sitka Sentinel And The Arrowhead Press

Final attack on voting age of 19 fails yesterday
FAIRBANKS (AP) The third and final series of attempts to change the constitutional convention's decision to set the voting age of future Alaskans at 19 failed yesterday.
The end came, after hours of lively and sometimes almost bitter debate, when delegates defeated an attempt by Warren Taylor of Fairbanks to amend the suffrage article to read, "The legislature of the state (of Alaska) may provide by law the age and qualifications of voting of the state."
Acceptance of the amendment would have thrown out the earlier decision to spell out the age requirement in the constitution and to set the age limit at 19.
Taylor's maneuver didn't require a roll call vote, a rarity after two days of close decisions.
Failure of the amendment was followed by an attempt by Dora Sweeney of Juneau to set the age limit at 20, as originally proposed by the suffrage committee. But president William Egan ruled the amendment out of order.
Earlier Mildred Hermann of Juneau had moved to put the whole suffrage article back into committee. This was after roll call votes had been taken on setting the suffrage age at 18, 19, 20 and 21, respectively.
When Mrs. Sweeney's amendment was ruled out, the convention appeared ready to accept the fact a majority of delegates intended to extend the voting right to 19 year olds.
Anchorage delegate John Hellenthal led the fight against Taylor's move to throw the whole matter of voting qualifications into the laps of future legislators.
Hellenthal told the convention
Convention:
"If we leave voting qualifications out of the constitution, we will be the only state that does.
"If we leave it to the whim, mind you -- of the legislature, confusion, almost anarchy, would result. It would be like the English system of having no written constitution. Congress would never agree to this.
"This is the beginning," continued Hellenthal. "If this carries, the disgruntled few will seek to throw everything to the will of the legislature."
Seaborn Buckelew, Anchorage attorney, supporting Hellenthal, said. "To follow Taylor's amendment through -- let's adjourn now and present to Alaskans a blank piece of paper."
Another die-hard issue in the suffrage committee report concerns other voting qualifications.
Monday the convention approved the committee's recommendation that only the ability to "read or speak" be required for voting. An amendment to include ability to write
was defeated.
Yesterday, R. E. Robertson of Juneau unsuccessfully tried to change the provision to "to read and speak."
An additional effort to strike the whole section also failed.