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1959 the mayoralty election, a separate off-
year election, attracted 228,000 votes for
mayor, is that correct?
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding) :
Delegate Byrnes.
DELEGATE BYRNES: I would never
dispute your figures to save some time. My
problem is, I have two different charts, one
for the county level below, and one for
governor, above, and I am trying to relate
them.
DELEGATE CHABOT: I am working
from those.
DELEGATE BYRNES: I accept your
figures.
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding) :
Delegate Chabot.
DELEGATE CHABOT: You have spoken
of the phenomenon of voter fall-off when
the election is in an odd-numbered year, an
off-year, where you do not have statewide
elections to attract people to the polls. You
have in those charts also figures for several
counties; at least five counties, as I see
them, are represented in all charts, Anne
Arundel, Baltimore, Garrett, Montgomery,
Prince George's. I wonder if you could give
us the figure of voter fall-off when you
have both the county officials and governor
elected in the same year. What is the dif-
ference between the votes cast for the top
state official, governor, and the votes cast
for top county official, county council or
•county executive or board of commissioners
as the case may be?
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding) :
Delegate Byrnes.
DELEGATE BYRNES: As I say, I am
talking now in terms of averages over a
ten-year period. The estimate given by Dr.
Spencer was that on the local level you
had a response ranging from 55 percent to
60 and that on the gubernatorial level, it
went from 60 to 70, and that on the presi-
dential it went above that.
Obviously there are situations where
very heated election, in either Baltimore
City or Baltimore County, or any county
for that matter, held with a less than
heated election on the state level, will pro-
duce a higher percentage of response on
the higher level than it does on the lower
level. No doubt about that. I certainly con-
cede that.
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding):
Delegate Chabot.
DELEGATE CHABOT: Delegate
Byrnes, let us take one thing at a time.
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In all of these five counties in all of the
three general elections, the figures which
were distributed at your request to you
and also to the rest of the members of our
Committee, indicate what the vote was at
one and the same time, with the same elec-
torate going out to the polls. How many
of those who voted for governor bothered
to continue to vote for their top county of-
ficials when they were already at the polls?
What was the voter drop-off in general?
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding):
Delegate Byrnes.
DELEGATE BYRNES: Do you want to
know for each county? I would suggest
the answer to that is approximately 12 to
15 per cent.
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding):
Delegate Chabot.
DELEGATE CHABOT: Delegate
Byrnes, could we relate that approximately
12 to 15 percent drop-off when people are
already in the polling place to what the
figures were when they had to go at a
separate time to vote for mayor in Balti-
more City? What sort of drop-off was
there then? Was it as much as the 12 to
15 per cent on the average?
DELEGATE BYRNES: My understand-
ing is that it was substantially more. It
ranged down to 20 or 25 per cent less, in
some cases in Baltimore City. We can go
through each one. Fifty-four per cent in
1959, fifty-five per cent in 1963. That is
all I have.
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding):
Delegate Chabot.
DELEGATE CHABOT: Perhaps I did
not make myself clear or I did not under-
stand your previous answers. I thought
that you had indicated to me that instead
of a drop-off from governor to mayor in
each of the last four elections in Balti-
more, in two of those sets of elections,
1958-1959 and 1962-1963 there was actually
an increase in the vote as you went from
governor to mayor, is that not correct?
DELEGATE BYRNES: On two oc-
casions we had this.
DELEGATE CHABOT: On two occa-
sions we had increases and on two occa-
sions we had decreases?
DELEGATE BYRNES: Yes.
DELEGATE CHABOT: So do you still
insist that the average drop-off from gov-
ernor to mayor was as you had indicated,
about 20 per cent in Baltimore City?
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