find that they have grossly underestimated
the rate of growth of the population of the
State of Maryland, so that when we project,
as we must mathematically, the figure of
192 delegates in 1970 and 227 in 1980, and
beyond that, we get into the three and-four
hundreds. These are conservative estimates
at best, and so the Committee reluctantly,
and with sympathy, but nevertheless recog-
nizing the fact that it had to abide by the
decisions of the Supreme Court of the
United States, the one-man, one-vote rule,
decided that it was impossible to continue
the one delegate per county, and conse-
quently that system was abandoned.
Even today, using the 1960 census fig-
ures to provide one delegate for each
county, there is a 65 per cent deviation
existing within the presently-apportioned
General Assembly of Maryland. If one es-
tablishes the mean of population, the me-
dian figure of what it takes to represent
one- one hundred forty-secondth of the
total population of Maryland, some coun-
ties are under-represented to the point of
35 per cent and others are over-represented
to the point of 30 per cent so that there is
a 65 per cent swing within the existing
General Assembly of Maryland.
I should like to point out to the Commit-
tee of the Whole that if one examines the
other legislatures in the United States, one
will find that the national median figure
for the Senate for all State legislatures is
38 Senate members, and the national me-
dian figure for the lower House bodies is
one hundred—38 and 100. Using the na-
tional medians and applying them to the
suggested 35-105 it is clear that in making
the recommendation, the Committee has
fallen within the national median quite sig-
nificantly.
Of course, there are the highs and the
lows. The low State Senate with 18 Sena-
tors, and House of Delegates with 35 dele-
gates is in the State of Delaware, the state
high of 67 Senators is in Minnesota, and
the state high of 400 House members is in
New Hampshire.
As examples of other states, which have
fewer Senate and House members than the
35-105 suggested by the Committee, I refer
you to the following: the large State of
California, with 40 Members in the Senate
and 80 in the House; Arkansas with 35-
100, Arizona with 30-60, Alaska with 20-
40, Colorado with 35-65, Hawaii with 25-51,
Idaho with 35-70, Kentucky with 38-100,
Nevada with 20-40, New Hampshire with
42-70, Oregon with 30-60, South Dakota
with 35-75, Tennessee with 33-99, Utah |
with 28-69, Washington with 49-99, and
Wyoming with 30-61.
I might point out also that of these
states, Ohio with 33 members in the Senate
and 99 in the House and Tennessee with
33 and 99 has the three-to-one ratio, which
the Committee recommends.
It is true that if the figures of 35 and
105 are adopted, as is suggested by the
Committee, it does amount to a total elimi-
nation of 45 Senate and House members
from the 185 aggregate of the House and
Senate who are serving today. This is not
such severe surgery as one might think
when one examines what has happened re-
cently elsewhere as a result of the restruc-
turing of the legislatures. In Connecticut,
for example, as a result of a reduction in
the size of the Senate and House there was
a reduction of 117 members. Likewise in
Vermont 96 were eliminated. There is
ample precedent for larger reductions in
size.
Projecting the figure of 3,960,000 in
Maryland for 1970, each Senate member
would represent approximately 113,000
people and each House member would rep-
resent approximately 37,700 people.
If one examines the population of the
State of Maryland from 1790 until today,
one will find that there has been first of
all a constant growth in the size of the
State as a whole, although there were
three counties which lost population be-
tween 1950 and 1960, and there were six
counties which had less population in 1950
than they did in 1970. Nevertheless, despite
these sporadic decreases in certain areas
of the state, under the Constitution of 1776,
each delegate represented approximately
2,700 people in one of the counties.
Now, it is quite impossible to put the lid
on the number of people which a delegate
or senator may represent, unless one wants
to engage in the Swiss canton style, the
town hall meeting, and have everyone in
or have a significant number of people
representing a state, both in the House
and the Senate.
The Committee felt in recommending 35
and 105 that in this age of mass communi-
cation and with so much information avail-
able, that representation would not suffer,
even though an ever-increasing number of
persons were represented by a single dele-
gate or single senator.
It was impossible to do otherwise, with-
out getting into problems which I have
discussed heretofore. |
