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the State to which he has moved from
Maryland.
I think a straightforward explanation of
what the language here proposes demon-
strates the difficulty of its administration
and that is certainly something that we
should not mandate be done in the Con-
stitution.
If one of us were to move away from
Maryland, presumably if we were to be
cited by the precinct chairman in our pre-
cinct as having moved to California, then
we should be removed from the voting
books. We could then apply by letter to the
Board of Supervisors of Elections in that
county from which we moved, I assume,
from California, and apply to vote in
Maryland, even though we now live and
intend to live in California, although we
are not yet eligible to vote in California.
However, if the Board of Election Su-
pervisors should through its intimate
knowledge of the California voting laws,
assure itself that we were eligible to vote
in California or meeting the voting resi-
dence requirements in California, we would
not then be eligible to vote in Maryland.
What this means is that every Board of
Supervisors of Election in the State of
Maryland must have a working knowledge
of the election laws of all other 49 states
of the union.
It seems to me again that while this is
a lovely thought, that we would do a nice
thing for the people who used to live in
Maryland, and for old time's sake, if we
would let them vote here in a presidential
election, it still seems to me that the prac-
tical difficulties of administering this kind
of provision warrant a merciful funeral for
it at this Convention.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Chabot.
DELEGATE CHABOT: I have a ques-
tion of Delegate Koss.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Koss, do
you desire to yield to Delegate Chabot?
DELEGATE KOSS: Yes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Chabot
DELEGATE CHABOT: Delegate Han-
son has created a very fine straw man and
dressed him up in very fine clothes, and
then just blown hard enough to show that
he is just a straw man.
I suggest that we did not mandate the
General Assembly to do anything. The
Committee considered this matter and con-
cluded that at the present time while we
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were moving ahead, we should make sure
that voters did not lose their right to vote
for president by reason of crossing the
state lines just before election. Many states
had not yet taken appropriate actions along
this line, and so the Committee concluded
that the General Assembly ought to have
the power if it felt that it was appropriate
to exercise the power, in the manner that
it felt it was appropriate to exercise the
power, to permit the voter who had re-
cently left his state nevertheless to vote
for president.
We are not talking about any state office
or county office or anything of that nature.
We would permit them to vote for presi-
dent if they had moved to another state.
It would still be the president of the same
nation that they were in when they lived
in this State.
And it would be under such circum-
stances, if the General Assembly concluded
that the administrative difficulties involved
were too complex, there is nothing in here
that requires the General Assembly to act.
This would be the sort of thing that would
involve, it would seem to us, peculiarly
legislative determinations based upon the
sort of investigation that a legislative com-
mittee ought to make, and not a constitu-
tional committee.
It would involve the sort of determina-
tions that would change from time to time,
and so we decided to freeze nothing in here
on this matter. However if we were silent
on this matter, then the General Assembly
would be forbidden to act, because we had
set up general standards for all elections
which these people could no longer meet.
This is a grant of authority to be exer-
cised by the General Assembly in the ap-
propriate circumstances as it saw fit, and
we feel that it should stay in.
THE CHAIRMAN: Is there any further
discussion?
Delegate Scanlan.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: I rise to sup-
port the amendment offered by Delegate
Hanson. I followed him on a number of
charges up San Juan Hill at this Conven-
tion. Most of them made sense, and some
were shot down.
This time his proposition not only makes
good sense, but I think it will capture a
majority of the votes of the delegates. I
know we are all concerned by the prob-
lem that the United States is a mobile na-
tion with people moving here and about.
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