wishes to offer the amendment and obtains
recognition from the Chair for that pur-
pose, the Chair will ask him to send the
amendment forward to the desk to be read.
While that is being done, the chief page
will see that the copies are distributed to
the desks of the delegates. So that by the
time the Reading Clerk is reading the
amendments, the pages hopefully will have
them in the hands of the delegates.
DELEGATE BURDETTE: Mr. Presi-
dent, thank you. I have a second question,
if I may ask it.
In the debate the other day, if my mem-
ory is correct, we introduced what I
thought was salutary informality in mak-
ing technical improvements. I believe the
word "in" was changed to "of" almost by
general agreement. There was a second
method of introducing amendments in real-
ity. That was that a delegate rose and
asked a mover if he would accept a change
of a word. This informality permits a very
ready interchange if it does not involve a
long amendment.
If we were to interpret the rules liter-
ally, an amendment would have to be
printed to change a typographical error
that turns up or is noted on the floor. This
would delay the proceeding. Could we get
an interpretation from you?
THE PRESIDENT: Again, if I may
undertake to answer in lieu of the Chair-
man of the Committee, and state the inter-
pretation which I think the presiding offi-
cer should give to the rule, it would be
this: If a printed recommendation or
printed amendment contains a typograph-
ical error, such as occurred the other day,
an error in one word, I would take it that
the typographical error could be corrected
without being reprinted, in the absence of
objection.
If a delegate desired to suggest to the
sponsor a modification of the printed
amendment, I take it that the modification,
if accepted by the sponsor, could be made
to the printed amendment if it was ac-
cepted by the sponsor and if there was no
objection. Obviously if the modification was
long and detailed, there would be an ob-
jection or the Chair itself would require
that the amendment be reprinted.
DELEGATE BURDETTE: Mr. Presi-
dent, I would think also if the modification
to be suggested is long and involved or
modestly so, it would still be possible to
have the change printed or Xeroxed or
some other interpretation of printing very
quickly. |
THE PRESIDENT: A matter of fifteen
or twenty minutes, I think so.
DELEGATE BURDETTE: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Any further ques-
tions of the chairman for purposes of clari-
fication?
THE PRESIDENT: Delegate Wheat-
ley.
DELEGATE WHEATLEY: Mr. Chair-
man, I was questioning the language on
page 7 of the report, not as to objection,
but for clarification of the procedure for
amendments. As I understand it would
first have the opportunity to present
amendments. As I understand it we would
in the page we point out the commentary.
This means that there will be two oppor-
tunities to prepare and offer it.
I wonder about the thinking of the Com-
mittee as to, A, whether or not we can
afford this luxury and, as we get further
along, B, if the Chairman could refresh
my memory as to amendments at the time
of second or third reading in the Conven-
tion, what is the provision relative to that?
DELEGATE SCANLAN: Answering
your first question, are we indulging in a
luxury we cannot afford by following tra-
ditional parliamentary procedure? The
committee felt not. We felt this would be
a fair opportunity to give a delegate who
had not thought of an amendment a chance
to offer it on the floor. An amendment
could be offered by a delegate the first time
when the particular section of the main
question was being amended and finally
when the last call came on the question of
the whole main question, he would have an-
other opportunity. Of course, he could not
offer it twice except maybe under recon-
sideration.
I am sure there is a possibility of abuse
here, but I think that we wanted to be
sure that the administrative procedures es-
tablished by the president and the officers
really gave a delegate a chance to get his
amendment printed and distributed in time.
I think the procedure of the other day
shows this can be done realistically, at
least with reasonably short amendments. I
suppose we will have longer ones later on.
In that connection, might I transmit to
you what one of the members of the Rules
Committee suggested would be a good
thing. That is that anybody who is con-
templating an amendment to a committee
report should first consult with the chair-
man of the committee to find out if his |
