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Now, it is quite true that Congressman
Cellers' bills which have been submitted
regularly to the Congress and House since
1951 have generally called for a fifteen
percent deviation from the mean. However,
in recent times the Senate has been re-
ducing that figure to ten percent, and it
appears that if a percentage is ever
adopted that ten percent will probably be
the percentage agreed upon.
I am not suggesting to you that the
prospects of congressional final decision in
this area are at hand. In talking to some
of the members of the Congress, I think
it is fair to say that there will be continued
stalemates.
I think it is interesting to note that Con-
gress — that is, the House — has been quite
anxious to forestall litigation in this area,
and consequently has approached the prob-
lem of congressional redistricting both
from a temporary point of view and from
a permanent.
Congress has attempted, in the House at
least, to provide for variations as high as
thirty percent, but saying that after 1972
the House figure shall be a fifteen percent
one. This has not met with any approval
in the Senate, and consequently you have
had the stalemate of which I have spoken
and which I suspect is going to continue to
exist for some time.
Now, we require under the constitutional
provision here that there be congressional
redistricting in 1972 and every tenth year
thereafter. There will be no question, there-
fore, that the decennial census figures will
be at hand for the purpose of determining
what the districts shall be.
You will note, too, that we used the
identical sentence with respect to natural
boundaries and boundaries of political sub-
divisions. We have required that due re-
gard shall be given to natural boundaries
and the boundaries of political subdivisions,
but in this particular context we would not
allow any deviation over and above the
ten percent at all.
I think I should point out here that the
special three-judge court, which provided
the congressional districts under which we
operate today, actually allowed a flexibility
of less than two percent of deviation from
the mean, so that in setting the ten per-
cent we are in reality providing an addi-
tional eight percent within which to redraw
congressional districts in 1972.
Now, the Committee decided that we
would follow, to some extent, the commis-
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sion procedure that we employed in the
section on the General Assembly itself.
That is to say that the Committee on Legis-
lative Redistricting, which you will re-
member would contain four members from
each party having been designated by the
respective party leaders in the House and
the Senate, for a total of eight, plus the
Governor's appointee, who shall be chair-
man for the tie-breaker, the ninth party,
is the commission which does the redis-
tricting for the General Assembly. This
Commission hopefully would gain some
stature and prestige and expertise, and
therefore we have conferred upon it the
duty of initiating congressional districting
under 3.03 (e). In any year in which there
is to be congressional redistricting that
commission will submit to the governor,
who in turn shall send it to the General
Assembly, a plan for congressional redis-
tricting.
Now, we have required that the General
Assembly take it and either enact it into
law or enact a redistricting plan of its
own. We feel that we cannot go any further
than this and attempt to confer jurisdic-
tion upon the Court of Appeals or any
court whatsoever because of the complica-
tions that arise under the constitution.
Ultimately it would appear, as we have
pointed out before, that the responsibility
for drawing the districts is in the General
Assembly, and I do not think it would be
wise to put any of that responsibility any
place else, although we recognize that the
federal courts in Maryland have taken this
responsibility on themselves in 1966.
Here I should say with respect to natural
boundaries that we would anticipate that
one could jump the Chesapeake Bay in
order to keep a single congressional dis-
trict. In this respect we say that we differ
from what we have urged with respect to
legislative districts, General Assembly dis-
tricts, where we do not contemplate it
would or should be necessary because of the
smallness of those areas, or for other rea-
sons as well, but here we would anticipate
the possibility of jumping the Bay, if it
became necessary, although we believe that
when we have said that due regard shall
be given to natural barriers this should
not be done lightly, that any of these
natural barriers should be jumped.
That concludes my comments on con-
gressional districting. We are not sched-
uled, according to the CONGRESSIONAL
QUARTERLY, to get a ninth congressman
in 1970, although there does still appear to
be some possibility that we could obtain a
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