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No. 13. The Clerk will read the amend-
ment.
READING CLERK: Amendment No.
13 to Committee Recommendations LB-1,
LB-2, LB-3 as amended by Report S&D-16,
by Delegates Lord, Byrnes, Carson, Abram-
son, Adkins, Barrick, Baumann, Blair,
Bothe, Boyer, Buzzell, Cardin, Case, Ci-
cone, Dabrowski, Darby, Della, Dorsey,
Dulany, Eckenrode, Finch, Frederick, Gil-
christ, Hickman, Hostetter, Hutchinson,
James, Jett, Johnson, Kahl, Kirkland,
Mason, Murphy, Peters, Ritter, Rollins,
Rosenstock, Rush, Rybczynski, Singer, Soul,
Stern, Storm, Sybert, Vecera, Webb, Weide-
meyer, Wheatley, and Willis.
On page 2, section 3.03, Composition of
the General Assembly, strike out all of lines
1 through 5, inclusive, and insert in lieu
thereof the following: " 'gates. One Sen-
ator shall be elected from each senate dis-
trict. Three delegates shall be elected with-
in each senate district, either from single-
member or multi-member delegate districts,
or a combination thereof, as provided by
the redistricting plan.' "
THE PRESIDENT: The amendment is
submitted by Delegate Lord and seconded
by the co-sponsors.
Before we start debate, just a moment.
There is some little confusion in the rec-
ord. Will you please mark the amendment
as Amendment No. 14 rather than 13?
This is a period of controlled debate,
twenty minutes controlled by Delegate Lord
and 20 minutes by Delegate Gallagher, 10
minutes uncontrolled. The usual rule is ap-
plicable.
Delegate Lord.
DELEGATE LORD: Mr. President and
fellow delegates, I will speak for a few
minutes to this amendment and then we
will recognize three other speakers to
round out the 20 minutes of controlled de-
bate. I would like to begin by reading a
quotation from the original Constitution
of Maryland, the 1776 Constitution, where
it said, "All free men so qualified shall on
the first Monday of October, 1776, elect viva
voce four delegates for their respective
counties of the most wise, sensible, and dis-
creet of the people."
All three constitutions that have suc-
ceeded it have established multi-member
districts for each county specifying the
number. It was not until 1966 that the
State of Maryland had its first single mem-
ber district. Maryland now has eight. I
refer to this history only to show that these
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constitutions have been in error in that
they attempted to freeze one solution into
the constitution and then resorted to the
judiciary in order to straighten the situa-
tion out.
I submit that the Legislative Branch
Committee is making exactly the same
error. They tell us there is only one good
solution and that is single-member dis-
tricts, and it is so good that it must be en-
shrined in the constitution. I think it is
unwise and we must look to the evidence
that they cite to this body in order to
justify their conclusion.
Now, the first evidence is a chart which
shows the other twelve states that have
elected to try this single-member district
solution in their lower houses exclusively.
Of these twelve states, certainly five of
them are not analogous to Maryland at all.
They are Colorado, Kansas, Delaware,
Rhode Island, and Utah. The fact that that
is not stated by the majority or the Com-
mittee on the Legislative Branch is that
there are thirty-one states that use a mixed
system of districting — that is, a mixed
system of single-member districts and
multi-member districts — in composing
their lower house. This is precisely what
the amendment that is before you would
do, and we ask your earnest consideration
of it.
I read in a recent letter from the Na-
tional Municipal League dated December
26, 1967, addressed to me, "The prefer-
ence for mixing single member and multi-
member districts within the same chamber
has shown marked preference in the lower
houses where thirty-four of the thirty-nine
districts are so elected."
Also with reference to those twelve
states, several of them do not require in
their constitution that single-member dis-
tricts be mandated in the lower house. It
is only done by statute, so the small effect
of twelve states is further minimized by
this qualification. The Committee has pre-
sented to this body no testimony of how the
system has worked in these twelve states.
It has written numerous memoranda and
has submitted exhibits to this Convention.
None of them refers to the experience that
other states have enjoyed or not enjoyed
under single-member districts.
It is my understanding that no testimony
was taken in the Committee. We do not even
have the benefit of what the Judicial
Branch Committee gave us which was a
long distance telephone call to a state that
had experience in this area. The only state
that was referred to by Chairman Galla-
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