National Affairs: The Winners of No Election

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When the votes were counted in New Mexico's U.S. Senate election in 1952, the result was close enough for an argument. The official count gave Democratic Senator Dennis Chavez a lead of only 5,071 votes over onetime U.S. Secretary of War Patrick Jay Hurley. Republican Hurley cried fraud, contested the election and got the U.S. Senate to investigate. For 15 months a Senate subcommittee—Republicans Frank Barrett of Wyoming and Charles Potter of Michigan and Democrat Thomas Hennings of Missouri—tried to discover who had won.

Last week the subcommittee gave up, declared by a 2-1 vote (Democrat Hennings objecting) that no one had been elected. Slapping hard at New Mexico's lax polling methods, the subcommittee reported so many irregularities in the election that it was "impossible to distinguish the free and honest vote." Among the findings: flagrant violations of the constitutional rights of more than 55,000 voters, illegal and premature destruction of 13,000 ballots, fraudulent alteration of 17,000 ballots, invalidation of 3,300 votes in the recount, complete disregard of voter-assistance laws, and general misconduct at the polls. Concluded the two Republicans on the subcommittee: "The senatorial election did not express the free will of the people of New Mexico."

In failing to side with either man, the report in effect called for the ouster of Chavez. In application, however, it probably will mean final confirmation of his right to the seat. The report this week goes to the Rules Committee and then to the Senate floor. There, barring a miracle, Dennis Chavez should be able to muster enough of his colleagues' votes to keep his seat. This prospect was clear to ex-Cavalryman Hurley. Growled he: "The Grand Old Party apparently now hasn't the guts that God gave a goose!"