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cession act of the General Assembly. I
want to make it clear just what the fed-
eral Constitution provision is.
It is this: notice the peculiar language
used here: "The Congress shall have the
Power ... to exercise exclusive Legisla-
tion", "exclusive Legislation."
Now, I think it is important that we not
consider the fact that the United States
exercises jurisdiction, because they exer-
cise jurisdiction all over the country, in
and out of federal enclaves, but when we
cede land to the federal government, they
really frequently do not exercise any more
jurisdiction over that land than they do
over all the rest of the country, and the
difference that has been recognized by the
courts is, that if they are not exercising
jurisdiction, there is no reason why Mary-
land should not exercise all of its regular
jurisdiction over those people.
This will come up in a later amendment
under GP-5, but I believe it is important
that we make it clear exactly whom we
are covering and that what we mean here
is we are not going to deny to people the
right to vote solely by reason of their
living on land over which the United States
has been ceded jurisdiction.
This has happened in the past. For ex-
ample, Fort Detrick at present has no
civilians, no people living on the post who
are interested in voting1, except the com-
manding officer's wife, and she was born
an Army brat and she has never estab-
lished residency anywhere.
But Fort Detrick has no one interested
now, but they may be later. They were
denied the right to vote because of an old
divorce case. This will come out in more
detail. This divorce case said that that
was really foreign territory, outside of the
State of Maryland and because it was out-
side of the State of Maryland, even though
the federal government is not exercising
any unusual jurisdiction over Fort Detrick,
they do not provide for any of the services
that the State ordinarily provides.
So I do think this is an important
change to be made in this section.
We mean to include all people on federal
enclaves whether the United States exer-
cises jurisdiction or not, so long as we
have ceded jurisdiction to them, so that
they could, if they wanted to, exercise that
jurisdiction.
If there are any questions, I will be
glad to try to answer them.
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THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any ques-
tions of the sponsor of the amendment?
Delegate Hardwicke?
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Mr. Chair-
man, I ask this question half seriously and
half facetiously. Is Delegate Storm in-
tending to include the District of Columbia
which is a territory over which Maryland
has ceded jurisdiction to the United States?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Storm?
DELEGATE STORM: Delegate Hard-
wicke, you know until the Committee on
Suffrage and Elections called my atten-
tion to the Albaugh Case which definitely
decided that there was a case in 1801
which made this impossible, I was worried
for fear that the only ones we would en-
franchise by having the word "exercises"
were the people in the District of Colum-
bia.
I was wrong, and they made that clear
because the federal case has decided after
they started exercising jurisdiction over
the District of Columbia, that that changed
our power to exercise any jurisdiction.
This will all be made clear later under
discussion of GP-5. But believe me, we took
into account and the Committee took into
account the possibility that some of the
voteless people in the District might ask
to come back to Maryland.
We cannot take them.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hard-
wicke?
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Then is
the answer yes?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Storm.
DELEGATE STORM: I forget what
your question was, but my answer I am
sure will satisfy you; whether it was yes
or no, whether you agree with it or not.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Marvin
Anderson.
DELEGATE ANDERSON: Mr. Chair-
man, I would like to ask Delegate Storm a
question.
THE CHAIRMAN: State the question.
DELEGATE ANDERSON: I am un-
certain whether you are saying that every
one at Fort Meade of proper legal age
could register or not?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Storm.
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