July 31, 1986

Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist today specifically denied allegations by more than 10 people who have said they saw him questioning or challenging voters about their qualifications at polling places in Phoenix in the early 1960's. Testifying under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Justice Rehnquist said flatly that he had never ''harassed or intimidated'' voters and had not personally ''challenged'' the qualifications of any voters between 1958 and 1968. Justice Rehnquist, President Reagan's nominee to be Chief Justice of the United States, also said he did not recall approaching any voters in those years to question them about their qualifications or to ask them to prove their ability to read, as several people have alleged. But he said it was possible he had taken such an action in 1954. Candor Is at Issue Democratic senators questioned him closely about recent statements by more than 10 people to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and to news organizations, including The New York Times, that they had seen Mr. Rehnquist at Phoenix polling places in the early 1960's demanding that voters demonstrate that they could read or that they were otherwise qualified to vote.

America's eight largest steel producers in the last four years have collectively lost $8 billion, a staggering sum. Two have filed for bankruptcy, and the industry's bloodletting continues unstanched. By most accounts, the drastic retrenchment of Big Steel will continue, thinning its ranks and chopping its survivors down in size. ''For the remainder of this decade,'' said Walter F. Williams, the chairman of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, ''we'll be faced with slow worldwide economic growth, excess steel capacity both here and abroad, a changing economic mix and the continuing threat of high levels of both direct and indirect steel imports.'' In response, the largest companies are likely to turn in the next 10 years to joint ventures with foreign producers, diversification away from steel and importing low-cost raw steel products in a desperate push to shave costs and raise capital for modernization.

House conferees on the tax revision bill decided today to insist at the outset of negotiations with the Senate that the final legislation permit people to deduct their state and local sales tax payments. The representatives also agreed to fight for a bill that would sharply restrict depreciation allowances for businesses and eliminate certain deductions for oil and gas exploration. In one of their most significant concessions to the Senate, the representatives decided to deny deductions for charitable contributions to taxpayers who did not otherwise itemize their deductions. Such deductions are allowed under the current tax law, and the House-passed bill would permit them to the extent that contributions exceeded $100.

Like most big Western sheep producers, Steve Raftopoulos owes a lot on his land, rarely gets weekends off, knows that his business is in the grip of forces beyond his control - and is a happy man. ''It's because I'm an optimist,'' he grinned. ''All ranchers are optimists - if we weren't, we'd have quit a long time ago.'' That kind of faith, which kept the Raftopoulos family in the sheep business during the long plunge in lamb and wool consumption since World War II, is now starting to pay off, and that makes the smiling easier. As his lamb crop fattens in the high pastures of the Gore Range of the Rockies, Mr. Raftopoulos knows that demand for lamb is moving up again and that wool prices may be buoyed by the promise of wool blends.

A top State Department official said today that the Reagan Administration was likely to vote against new international loans to Chile unless it improved its human rights record significantly. The Administration, while increasingly critical of Chile in recent months, has refrained from voting against loans to it by the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank. But pressed to answer how the United States would vote on such loans if it had to do so today, Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, told a House banking subcommittee, ''I would recommend we vote no.'' A Vote of Protest ''It would be a vote to protest the human rights situation in Chile today,'' he said.