Submitting their government to a drastic streamlining, Cambridge voters yesterday adopted Plan E, the new proportional representation, city manager charter, by a vote of from three to five thousand, unofficial and incomplete returns indicated at 3 o'clock last night.

In another contest of especial interest to groups of students here, Tom Eliot '28 defeated the Republican incumbent, Robert Luce, for the Ninth District's seat in Congress by two to three thousand votes, according to early returns.

Observers said last night that Plan E was adopted on the crest of one of the largest Republican turnouts in local history. Because of the intense interest in the presidential election, many more Republicans than in 1938 cast their ballots yesterday, almost all of them for the new charter.

Final returns in both the Ninth District race and the Plan E contest will not be completed until late this morning, for they are not officially counted until after the presidential and gubernatorial votes.

A former Government instructor here, and one time assistant managing editor of the CRIMSON, who recently resigned his post as regional director of the Wages and Hours Commission to conduct his campaign, Eliot seems to have taken a clean sweep from Luce.

With only two precincts, both Democratic, massing, he defeated Luce in strongly Republican Brookline by 466 votes. In Watertown Luce trailed by about 800 votes.

Rejected in the 1938 referendum by a slim number, Plan E was adopted today after an extensive "educational" campaign led by Dean James M. Landis of the Law School, chairman of the Plan E Committee.

In brief, the new charter provides for a nine-man city council, chosen on a city-wide basis by proportional representation. The council selects a city manager, who is responsible to it and a mayor who presides at council meetings and is ceremonial head of the government.

A School Committee of seven members, six elected by proportional representation, with the mayor as chairman, is also provided in the charter.