Although it would not affect my county in
the least, I will not vote for the Rybczynski
amendment to the amendment because of
that difference, but rather support the
Case-Lord amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Does any delegate
desire to speak in favor of the amendment
to the amendment?
Delegate Storm?
DELEGATE STORM: Mr. Chairman,
may I ask a question?
THE CHAIRMAN: To whom is the
question addressed?
DELEGATE STORM: I suppose to Mr.
Rybczynski.
THE CHAIRMAN: Since he is speaking
for, Delegate Rybczynski, do you yield to a
question?
DELEGATE RYBCZYNSKI: Yes, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Storm.
DELEGATE STORM: I am trying to
search for some flexibility here, and I have
just been wondering if it would be inad-
visable in your opinion to state simply that
the State shall be divided into legislative
districts for the election of senators and
delegates.
DELEGATE RYBCZKNSKI: Period.
DELEGATE STORM: Then let the dif-
ferent subdivisions decide. In Prince
George's County, for example, they might
want all single-member districts. In my
county, I think we would want to continue
to vote county-wide, because this parochial-
ism question does affect people when they
get into office.
I have seen this work in little towns that
get split, one side of the square against the
other, and this is just foolish.
Now, why should we in this Convention
hamstring the local authorities. Would it
not be more advisable to have complete
flexibility so that people could have what
they want in their own county, and have
their own district if they so desired. In
other words, we would not describe one,
two, or three, but rather allow the people
to decide. If they want one, they would
have one. Why tell everyone they must do
it a particular way?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Rybczynski?
DELEGATE RYBCZYNSKI: Delegate
Storm, I did consider exactly what you are
talking about to begin with and in my own |
judgment I felt that this would be defeated
on the floor. As 1 mentioned before, my
hope was that this would be a compromise
between the two positions; that is, merely
leaving the entire question to the General
Assembly, which I thought would be de-
feated, and creating the one-member, one-
delegate system, which I also believed
would be defeated.
Now, getting down to the cases involved:
why does that make this good? Because
the line-up would be the same, regardless of
how you arrived at the conclusion. That is,
the 40-120 naturally lends itself to a three
to one setup. If there is going to be a Gov-
ernor's commission or if it is going to be
done by the General Assembly, or by this
body itself, three-to-one naturally lends it-
self to this setup, so that you will have a
nice, broad, senatorial district.
Somewhere in there you are going to
have three delegates being elected, whether
the districts encompass apart of a city or
run over county lines.
It will still work exactly the same way.
You can not get away from it. You have
to consider population. You have to make
the districts contiguous. You have to do a
lot of things to comply with the law.
The end result must be the same, and
this point answers Delegate Dulany, at the
same time. How can we have a senatorial
district with two delegates being elected,
and have another senatorial district with
four delegates being elected? This is im-
possible. It cannot work that way. This
leads to my other argument, and the main
reason I am opposed to single-member dis-
tricts. Why make things so complicated for
the average voter that he does not know
where he belongs. Why put him in a sepa-
rate delegate district, a senate district,
councilmanic, and Congressional district?
This is too complicated for the average
newspaper reader, I believe.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Storm?
DELEGATE STORM: Then you con-
clude there is no way that the Convention
can accomplish flexibility?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Rybczyn-
ski, you have one minute.
DELEGATE RYBCZYNSKI. I believe
this provides all the flexibility that you can
find in the ratio and in this system.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Storm?
DELEGATE STORM: May I ask Dele-
gate Gallagher a question? |
