fence, "if any county entitled to more than
one delegate in completely surrounded by
counties so insufficient in population that
all their delegates cast a percentage vote,
that county shall be entitled to the full
number of delegates, with one vote, plus
one delegate casting a percentage vote,"
which would be, as far as I am able to tell,
only applicable to Wicomico in 1970.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Chabot?
DELEGATE CHABOT: If I may con-
tinue, are you sure that it is .8 rather than
.79, or .785, or at what point do you deter-
mine when to round off the figures?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gallagher?
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: The staff
came as close as it could in coming up with
a number.
We did not get into hundredths. We got
into tenths. Whether this would be good
practice when you are actually allocating
the percentages, I am not certain.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Chabot?
DELEGATE CHABOT: I am trying to
find out what the Constitutional command
is, rather than what we do here for the
moment to give a brief illustration.
I find nothing in this draft language
which would authorize whoever makes the
official computations to stop at any particu-
lar number of decimal points.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gallagher.
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: That is
quite true. A percentage vote can be car-
ried out to four or five places, I suppose.
The only thing I know is that it might have
to be delimited at some point constitution-
ally to decide how far it would go.
One of the problems that you might find
yourself in if you really mean that you
only have 120 votes is a situation where
you really could not project the percentages
to a point where you had exactly 120
votes, and you would always fall either
short of 120 or be over 120
I suggest the way to remedy that is to al-
locate percentage votes to the members of
the Court of Appeals.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hickman?
DELEGATE HICKMAN: Mr. Chairman,
I think in answer to the last question, the
Supreme Court did expect some deviation,
and I do not think it will ever come to an
exactness, as the question implies. |
I thought someone else would answer
Delegate Rybczynski. The first question
was, would the people in the small county
on one side of the street who had only a
half vote and no representative be satisfied
if the person on the other side had a full
representative?
I think the smaller counties would be-
lieve so. I might say that the person who
has a half vote might have more influence
in the legislature than the person on the
other side who has a full vote. I do not
think the Supreme Court will ever be able
to reach a certainty, where everybody who
comes here has the same ability, the same
IQ and everything else, though the smaller
counties would prefer that.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Gallagher?
DELEGATE GALLAGHER: Mr. Chair-
man, there is another answer to Mr. Ryb-
czynski's question, which perhaps might be
helpful. Some counties might have more
than one delegate, so that if I live in
County A, I would be represented by two
delegates; if I lived in County B, I would
be represented by one, so you could say
theoretically that a resident of one county
has twice as much voting power, because
he hat got two votes in the house than the
man who lives in the one where there is
only a single representative. It is not really
entirely out of line to say that a regular
voter in one county has more or less of an
impact; it is just a question of what you
do with the fraction and how significant it
becomes.
I do not know how you would break ties,
whether if you have 60.3, that would be
good enough to get over a majority, if you
need 120.5.I just don't know.
THE CHAIRMAN: Before putting the
question, the Chair would like to announce
that we are proud to have with us in the
gallery today the Honorable William Houck,
Chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee. We are delighted to have him
here.
(Applause.)
Are you ready for the question.
(Call for the question.)
The question arises on the adoption of
Amendment No. 9 to Committee Recom-
mendation LB-I.
DELEGATE KEY: Mr. Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Key.
DELEGATE KEY: I have just one thing |
