each House, regardless of limitation. If you
look at the Constitution of 1776, you will
find that although there were I8 counties
existing in Maryland at that time, the Con-
stitution called for only 15 Senators, six to
be elected from the Eastern Shore, and
nine from the Western Shore, by an elec-
toral college.
In the House, each county was entitled
to only four delegates, and the Cities of
Baltimore and Annapolis were entitled to
two. In the 1851 Constitution, for the first
time the State of Maryland adopted the
proposition that each County was entitled
to one Senator and so with 2I counties in
Maryland, there were 2I county Senators.
In the House, however, there was a sliding
scale so that there could not be, regardless
of population, more than five delegates.
The 1864 Constitution retained the slid-
ing scale for the House, and the twenty-
one member Senate. The Constitution of
1867 under which we operate today origin-
ally provided a Senator for each county,
and three districts for the City of Balti-
more, with one Senator to come from each.
By amendments in 1900 and 1922, first one
additional and then two additional Senators
were provided for the City of Baltimore,
which brought the total to 29. In the House,
regardless of the number of inhabitants of
each county, which exceeded 55,000, one
county received no more than six Delegates
in the aggregate, so that in effect, built
into the State Constitution, was the ma-
chinery to determine the ultimate number
in any event. In 1950 the figure was frozen
at 123, because so many of the large coun-
ties had passed the 55,000 mark, and they
did not want to allow the gradations from
two to six, which were allowable to the
smaller counties as they were growing to
further provide malapportionment within
the General Assembly. Nevertheless had
the ultimate happened, and each of the 23
counties and six Districts of Baltimore City
exceeded the 55,000 figure the 29 subdivi-
sions of the state would still have not been
entitled to more than six apiece, so that you
would have had a maximum of 174 mem-
bers of the House of Delegates.
That was never allowed to happen, but as
I say, the machinery had been built in to
provide a maximum number.
1 address myself to this Constitutional
history because I think it is important from
the viewpoint of Committee Recommenda-
tion L-BI, for the Committee of the Whole
to recognize that never has the Constitu-
tion of Maryland allowed limitless numbers |
in either the House or the Senate. If we
had, we might well find ourselves in the
position of the State of New Hampshire,
with 400 members in the House, or in the
position of the lower house of the Congress
of the United States, where nothing can be
done because of the large number and they
operate permanently for all intents and
purposes on the Committee of the Whole
basis. And so in making a recommendation
of the limitation of 35-105, the Committee
was not unmindful of what had happened
before. It was not unmindful of the lack
of enthusiasm of a member of the General
Assembly to legislate himself out of office
by way of reapportionment and redistricting
when those times must come, and those
times have come and are with us, and will
be with us for days to come.
It is very necessary to provide some
limitation.
The 35-105 figure is not necessarily one
of magic or one of art but when one con-
siders the testimony which we had before
us, it became perfectly obvious that there
was great rationale and support for this
particular set of numbers.
I might point out, too, that there is no
necessity that the full 105-35 be used. Any
lesser number can be used, as long as the
multiple of 3 House members exists for
each Senate member.
At this point I think it appropriate to
address myself to the question of why we
have abandoned the attempt to keep every
county represented by at least one delegate.
The answer lies in the projected popula-
tion figures for the State of Maryland in
1970 and 1980.
We will have, if those estimates are cor-
rect, a little less by 40,000 than 4 million
people in 1970, and by 1980, the figure
should approach 5,400,000.
Under the one-man, one-vote rule, it be-
comes obvious that in 1970, in order to
provide each county with one delegate it
would be necessary that this chamber be
enlarged to accommodate 192 persons. If
the 5,400,000 figure prevails in 1980, it will
be necessary that this body be enlarged to
approximately 227 members.
Now, in using these population figures
and these projections, I should point out to
the Committee of the Whole that they have
always been on the conservative side, and
that if you go back and examine these same
projections in the 1930 and 1940 reports of
the State Department of Planning, you will |
