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the General Assembly, in order to amend
the Constitution, and then you are saying
by majority action then can call an entirely
new constitutional convention. I think it is
time that Maryland came in the main-
stream of the thinking of this country,
and I urge that this amendment be adopted.
(Second Vice-President William James
assumed the Chair.)
DELEGATE JAMES (presiding) : Is
there any further discussion?
The Chair recognizes Delegate Gallagher.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: Mr. Presi-
dent and ladies and gentlemen; may I
point out that the effect of this amendment
is to remove from the General Assembly
the power of calling for a constitutional
convention on its own volition. The ques-
tion of limiting the General Assembly to
merely submitting the question to the
voters is a very interesting one. Those stu-
dents of history will remember when the
twenty year question was put in 1950 to
the voters of Maryland, the voters over-
whelmingly, approximately 2.5 to 1, voted
for the calling of a constitutional conven-
tion, but because the number of votes cast
in the affirmative did not equal at least
fifty percent of the total votes cast for
governor, the General Assembly, in its
wisdom at that time, decided that there
would be no constitutional convention
called.
I submit to you that under the reappor-
tioned General Assembly which has less
to fear from a constitutional convention
that it is one of the proper prerogatives of
that body to call a constitutional conven-
tion if it desires to do so without the inter-
vening time lag; if the time lag would take
place, one could be involved with the ques-
tion of submitting it to the voters.
I submit to you the original proposal is
best, that you give the General Assembly
the option of either calling the constitu-
tional convention on its own volition; or
if it has some doubts about it, submitting
the question to the voters. I say to you in
a constitutional convention where we are
trying to strengthen the arm of the legisla-
ture, we should not be passing this kind
of amendment which, in effect, takes from
the General Assembly a very significant
and important power.
I urge you to defeat the amendment.
DELEGATE JAMES (presiding). The
Chair recognizes Delegate Weidemeyer.
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DELEGATE WEIDEMEYER: I rise to
support the amendment, Mr. President.
-As this section 10.03 is now drafted, the
legislature, by a simple majority, may call
a constitutional convention, or by a simple
majority it may submit the question to the
people. Then the amendment goes on to
majority voting on the question.
I know that a lot of them who looked
for a constitutional convention for quite a
few years want to liberalize it, but to have
a change in our basic fundamental or-
ganic law of the State every time the whim
of a bare majority occurs is something up-
setting and disturbing.
In a constitutional form of government
in a republic such as we have, a constitu-
tion is your baisc document, and once the
people get used to it and it is workable,
just for trivial reasons we do not want to
have it upset and disturb our whole
populace.
I think you are liberalizing it enough
when you take away from the General As-
sembly the power to call it every time they
want at the whim of a bare majority and
upset our basic structure of this State.
I think we better give a lot of thought to
this amendment, because if you work hard
here and you think you prepared a good
document, you do not want the next legis-
lature to come in and by a bare majority
call another constitutional convention, which
you provide for in this document.
DELEGATE JAMES (presiding) : The
gentleman has a question.
DELEGATE WEIDEMEYER: If he
wants to ask a question — I only have a
minute, and I wish to conclude my remarks.
This amendment is a very good amend-
ment, and I hope for the sake of stability
in government you will think long and hard
on it, and will vote for this amendment.
What could happen? Supposing yesterday
this same issue was up. We saw what
happened right in these very halls where
by a bare majority we adopted an amend-
ment; by another we reconsidered it; and
by another bare majority we put it in —
we had a tie vote.
The way this is written you are allow-
ing the legislature to call a constitutional
convention. Every time we have had a
constitutional convention before, in our
Constitutions of 1851, 1864, and 1867, the
legislature could take the sense of the
people, but it had to have two-thirds vote.
Before a Constitution could be mandated
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