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have a question of Delegate Case, which I
would like to ask.
THE CHAIRMAN: Does anyone desire
to speak in favor first? Delegate James?
DELEGATE JAMES: I just want to
clarify the situation on registration. By
recodification of the election laws in 1967,
voter registration was standardized
throughout the State.
THE CHAIRMAN: Does any other dele-
gate desire to speak in opposition? Dele-
gate Weidemeyer.
DELEGATE WEIDEMEYER: Mr. Pres-
ident and members of the Committee, Dele-
gate Case is one of the most intellectual
men that I know and one of the finest gen-
tlemen in this Convention. But with me, I
think, on this motion to reconsider, he has
already lost his case. If he were coming
into my county, I would say that an in-
telligent man like that ought to be voting
over in the other county where he knows
what he is voting about and not waste his
intelligence in my county.
On the other hand, if it were a candi-
date coming into my county and he did
not know what was going on there and did
not know what he was voting on there, I
would not care if he ever voted in my
county. I have to be against this amend-
ment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case, will
you take the floor to yield to a question?
DELEGATE CASE: Yes, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gleason.
DELEGATE GLEASON: If I under-
stand the purport of Delegate Marion's
question, if the James amendment is suc-
cessful, and it strikes out the last sen-
tence of this section and, as I understand
his question, if a person in fact moves to
a new district after the registration books
are closed, you have effectively deprived
him of his right to vote in all offices, fed-
eral or state. Is that a correct conclusion?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: No, Delegate Glea-
son, as I tried to make clear, his place of
voting is where his residence is when the
registration books were closed. So in the
case postulated by you, he would have lived
in his former residence at the time the
books were closed and he would be able to
vote there.
In other words, in that situation he
would go back to the old stamping grounds
and vote there.
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THE CHAIRMAN: Do you have a fur-
ther question, Delegate Gleason?
DELEGATE GLEASON: No, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Cardin.
DELEGATE CARDIN: If I may ask
Delegate Case a question, please, Mr.
Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case, do
you still yield to a question?
DELEGATE CASE: Yes, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Cardin.
DELEGATE CARDIN: With the ad-
vent of electronic devices and computer
registration, is it not conceivable that the
time of registration could be reduced to
as little as three days with a central
agency and a central list so that all of the
registrations throughout the State would
be in one major listing?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: I am certain that
anything is possible that the General As-
sembly sees fit to do. What I sought to
indicate by my reference to electronic
equipment was that I would visualize a
time when every voter would be on tape
which would be retrieval information and
the process of taking your vote off the
books in one area and carrying it in hand
to the books of another area would be done
away with and what would happen would
be that the supervisor of elections in Bal-
timore County, if you were going to Har-
ford County in the little example I gave,
would push a button in Baltimore County
and your name would be immediately en-
rolled in Harford County.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Cardin.
DELEGATE CARDIN: Then if the
General Assembly changed the registra-
tion date to three days prior to an elec-
tion, it is conceivable that that would be
all that would be necessary for one to reg-
ister to vote?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: This would be true.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are you ready for
the question?
(Call for the question.)
The question arises on the motion to re-
consider the vote by which Amendment
No. 5 was rejected. If the motion is car-
ried, Amendment No. 5 is before you.
Otherwise, not.
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