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DELEGATE KEY: Mr. Chairman, I
simply would like to say that my reserva-
tion about this particular sentence is what
it excludes more than what it includes. I
know the lawyers probably do have a
greater knowledge of the judges, but it has
been my experience in your activity as far
as electing judges that such organizations
as the League of Women Voters do more to
inform the citizenry of actual qualifications
of people running, as well as the news
media, than the Bar Association or all
those other organizations in Baltimore City,
and I just wonder if we get constitutional
recognition for a mandatory provision like
this in the Constitution, if this will not in
some way stop other organizations from do-
ing an effective job in electing judges.
THE CHAIRMAN: Does any delegate
desire to speak in opposition? Delegate
Wagandt.
DELEGATE WAGANDT: Would Dele-
gate Bamberger yield to a question?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Bamberger,
do you yield to a question?
DELEGATE BAMBERGER: I yield.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Wagandt.
DELEGATE WAGANDT: Would Dele-
gate Bamberger be willing to accept
Amendment No. 45 as the substitute, re-
considering this in place of 43? If you will
recall, that was Delegate Adkins' "a deli-
cate case" proposal, that the word "shall"
be replaced with the word "may."
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Bamberger.
DELEGATE BAMBERGER: No, I would
not. I am concerned with putting in the
Court of Appeals the power to decide when
there shall be or shall not be a bar poll of
lawyers.
I think that the local community can
make that judgment, speaking through its
lawyers practicing in that community. I
would not accept the amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other delegate
desire to speak in opposition to the amend-
ment?
I am sorry, in opposition to the motion
to reconsider. Delegate Fornos.
DELEGATE FORNOS: Mr. Chairman,
fellow delegates, I am not addressing my-
self to the merits or demerits of the Bam-
berger cause. Many good causes have lost
by good margins in this State, but on this
floor, in this judiciary article, many amend-
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ments have passed or failed to pass by a
vote of six or seven votes difference; and
I suggest that if we are going to go into
reconsidering all of the articles that failed
closely, maybe we should do so at this time.
THE CHAIRMAN: Does any delegate
desire to speak in favor of the motion to
reconsider? Delegate Mitchell.
DELEGATE MITCHELL: I yield to
Delegate Hanson.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hanson,
do you desire to speak in favor of the mo-
tion to reconsider?
DELEGATE HANSON: Yes, Mr. Chair-
man.
THE CHAIRMAN: You may proceed.
DELEGATE HANSON: I regret that I
was absent when the vote was originally
taken on this question. Let me tell you now
what I would have said then.
First of all, I think that such a provi-
sion ought not be in the constitution. Sec-
ondly, I think a poll of a large selection of
judges is bad policy. There is not only a
problem of members of the bar voting
against retention of sitting judges, whether
the poll is secret or public, but there is
also, I think, a very serious problem in-
volved in polling. Those of us who have
something to do with polling, especially
when people are supposed to make judges
in elections based on recommendations al-
legedly obtained through a poll, first of
all, there is the question of to whom the
poll is distributed in the first place. Sec-
ondly, there is the question of the ability
of the respondents to give an intelligent
answer in the poll. Delegate Bamberger
has already raised this question in pointing
out that in metropolitan areas there are
many lawyers who do not practice in the
courts that serve in those areas and have
no better knowledge of the judges serving
in that jurisdiction than any person who
might be polled on the street as to the quali-
fications of those judges, and very little in
the way of methods of finding out about
the qualifications of the judges; so what
we are asking for here in many instances
is an opinion that was not an informed
opinion, and then we are asking voters to
make judgments on the basis of an unin-
formed opinion.
Finally, there is the problem of the re-
turn on a poll. Now, I have been in juris-
dictions where the bar has been polled in
the selection of judges, and this was the
organized bar in that jurisdiction which
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