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be standards which should be safeguarded,
that this language should not be so broad
as to permit violation of civil rights in
terms of commitment or certification. Both
the Maryland Mental Health Association
and the Governor's Commission to Revise
the Mental Health Law strongly urged that
the language, non compos mentis, and re-
strictions of the present Constitution be
continued. This the Committee recommends.
Section 6 is a broad grant of power to
the General Assembly to establish and
define residence; to establish a uniform
system of permanent registration of voters;
to provide for the nomination of candidates;
and to regulate the time, place, and manner
of elections; to provide for the uniform
administration of elections and for ab-
sentee voting; to insure secrecy of voting;
and to protect the integrity of the election
process.
Section (j covers a myriad of individual
provisions in the present Constitution, and
the Committee interpreted this as granting
to the General Assembly the authority to
set the procedure, for instance, for resolv-
ing tie votes and contested elections, and
any other law that would come under the
broad mandate of insuring the secrecy of
voting and protecting the integrity of the
election process.
The last sentence of that section is, "The
General Assembly shall establish a state
agency to supervise and insure the uni-
form administration of laws under this
section."
This is a new provision. In all the testi-
mony before the Committee on the part
of election officials, the need for uniformity
and some responsibility lodged at the state
level was made and made and made.
While there is in the Constitution now
some indication that uniformity is re-
quired, in fact there is tremendous varia-
tion from county to county.
The Committee recognized the present
lack of uniformity and also recognized the
importance of establishing uniformity. One
of the reasons which I think this body
should consider is that the local county
election boards are the ones that administer
the state elections, and for this reason
the need for uniformity should be high-
lighted and understood.
The sentence reads, "The General As-
sembly shall by law establish a state
agency to supervise and insure the uniform
administration of laws under this section."
One of the practices which is prevalent
in this State is that each board of super-
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visors of elections employs its own at-
torney, so that it is not unlikely that you
get 24 different interpretations of the
same law.
This, we maintain, should not happen.
Insofar as municipal elections are indeed
mentioned in this constitution, we feel that
it is necessary to spell out the rights of
municipal corporations in terms of dates
and procedures. At the moment they vary
all over, from January to December.
The second paragraph of this section
establishes that municipal corporations by
local law or law enacted by a government
body of that municipality can establish
election procedures for its municipal elec-
tions, subject to such procedures and stand-
ards as the General Assembly may provide
by public general law.
This is language out of the local govern-
ment article. It was meant not in any way
to conflict with those provisions.
Section 7 establishes the time of the
elections. The first paragraph continues the
present congressional election in every
even year. The second paragraph continues
the present state election in 1970 and every
fourth year thereafter.
The third paragraph represents a marked
departure. The feeling of the majority of
the Committee was that if at all possible,
it would be desirable in terms of focusing
the issues on local government, which under
the article previously adopted here should
be even more important to the localities,
to take the county election out from under
the influence of the issues on the state
level. For this reason, paragraph 3 estab-
lishes the election for county officials at
1971 and every four years thereafter.
Section S, on pluralities, establishes that
the candidate receiving the greatest num-
ber of votes shall be elected to, or in the
case of primary elections become the nomi-
nee for the office for which they were can-
didates. In other words, this would rule out
any runoff elections.
Section 9 has no equivalent in the pres-
ent Constitution and says that no owner-
ship of an interest in property shall be
required as a condition for voting, except
with respect to non-resident property own-
ers in municipal elections, or for holding
any appointive or elective office in this
state or governmental unit thereof, except
that office holders may be required by law
to furnish appropriate bonds.
Until 1802 the state constitution had
varying property qualifications for state
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