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DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding) :
If there is no great objection, I think we
have scheduled here the minority report
which can take as long as the gentleman
wishes. Then we have twenty minutes of
controlled time for both sides and twenty
minutes of uncontrolled time for people to
speak for and against this subject. I think
perhaps if there is no great objection, we
will move on to the minority report. Dele-
gate Byrnes, would you like to come for-
ward? The Chair recognizes Delegate
Byrnes.
DELEGATE BYRNES: Ladies and gen-
tlemen of the Committee of the Whole, I
am going to try to cut what promised to be
at one point a very lengthy presentation
down to the bare bones.
My position in presenting the minority
report is one prompted by circumstance. I,
as you know, am a resident of Baltimore
City, which has odd year elections. I might
point out that we have had odd year elec-
tions in Baltimore City since our incor-
poration in 1796. The budget of Baltimore
City has long since been geared to this and
the people are fairly well oriented to it.
I do not speak so much in favor of Balti-
more City's position as I do of questioning
the majority's recommendation. I think you
should have before you all of the factors
involved in this very significant decision
that they are asking you to make. I am
really playing the role of the devil's advo-
cate more than anything else.
We are going to submit to you an amend-
ment for your consideration upon the com-
pletion of this report which will call for the
retention of the status quo. That is to say,
counties will remain merged with the state
elections and Baltimore City will remain
alone. If this does not receive sufficient
support, we want you to know that lurking
in the background is an amendment which
may be submitted by others which will call
for the merger of county elections with the
presidential elections.
Now the scholars that we have consulted
on this question have suggested to us that
the change suggested by the majority is a
radical one and should be carefully scruti-
nized. I refer to first, Joseph P. Harris
who is considered a national expert in the
area, author of Modernizing Our Election
Administration. He says the major election
reform needed is to lighten the burden on
the voter and on those in charge of elec-
tions, by electing fewer officers, holding
fewer elections, providing for longer terms
of office, and reducing the number of meas-
ures on the ballot.
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Henry Bain, another expert in the area,
made it clear in two memos to us, although
he did not favor merging presidential and
county elections. He says this: "There has
been a strong trend throughout the United
States toward a schedule of state and local
elections, which concentrate all of these ex-
cept municipal in the even-number, non-
presidential years." He said, speaking now
of Maryland, "It would be a shame to
abandon this highly desirable feature of
our constitution while we are making much
needed changes in other part of the state's
governmental structure."
In this connection, it is interesting to
note that, I continue to quote, "the two of
the four states which now elect any appre-
ciable number of state and local officials
in the odd numbered years, Virginia and
Mississippi, are the two that have gone the
farthest in designing their electoral sys-
tems so as to minimize voter turnout and
to insulate state and local government from
the influence of the majority of the
citizens."
I think at this point it might be appro-
priate to define for you what we consider
to be the definition of voter turnout. We
do not suggest that voter turnout, gross
numbers of people pulling levers, is a value
to democracy. We do suggest to you that
the higher the percentage of the turnout,
the more small "d," sometimes large "D"
democratic is the response. This has been
documented again by Mr. Bain, and I do
have statistics. This is where I am going
to try to cut my presentation, I have sta-
tistics all over the place concerning every
comment I am going to make. I originally
intended to go through them with you. I
think I would prefer simply to make the
statement and have you challenge me and
then we will have to document it. I would
like to give some credit while here to
Stephanie Harmon, one of the pages who
worked many, many long hours taking
sample ballots from all over the state for
all kinds of elections and going through
them and marking off all the officials we
had eliminated from the ballot, counting all slots that are used on the ballot and
then suggesting to me on a piece of paper
the residue. The point of that was to indi-
cate to you that there is a great deal of
room left on the ballot in most of the
areas. The most heavily populated ballots
are in Montgomery and Prince George's
where with an average in state elections of
220 out of 400 ballot positions there is
plenty of room on the ballot. We do not
consider that to be a problem. It is less so
now that we have eliminated a great num-
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