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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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will satisfy most of the people), start at that hour, close at that hour, everybody has the same chance. The only thing the politicians don't like about it is it means they have to get people in to man the polls in the meantime. I think that's a small price to pay to get rid of this problem, and twenty-four hour voting is the way to do it, uniform closing, twenty-four hours. They'll come to it.

Funny. I had that idea when I was still president of CBS. I talked it over one day with, I guess, Lyndon Johnson. It was when he was in office, and he said -- Of course, he wasn't opposed to the reporting, he was only opposed to the debates. He said, “Why don't you go up and talk to your friend, Ev Dirksen [Everett Mc. Dirksen], who was the majority leader, or, what they called the minority leader, I guess, on the Republican side. I had a bill that I wanted to get somebody to sponsor, which proposed uniform closing time, a twenty-four hour voting day, and I had an extra wrinkle to it and that was, move it to Sunday. What's more important than devoting the sabbath to the future of the country? [Interruption]

I had this proposal -- I don't know whether it was in the form of a final bill, or whether it was just a memorandum I had that I talked from, but the idea was to get the twenty-four hour -- And I guess I had made a talk at Cal Tech, in which I tied the Democratic process into technology, and I suggested we move it to Sunday.

Well, when Johnson said, “Go up and see your friend, Senator Dirksen,” who was also very close to Lyndon, I knew that if I said to Senator Dirksen that the President had suggested I come and see him, he would be very friendly. They were on opposite sides of the aisle, but they had a real solid understanding. I went in to see Senator Dirksen, told him the idea, and he was sort of taken by the twenty-four idea, but then he saw this Sunday thing. He





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