A problem has arisen for which we can-
not look to history or tradition for an an-
swer. In this era of reapportionment every
ten years, possibly every five years, we
must give special attention to what may
happen, both to incumbents and would-be
legislators as lines are redrawn. Our Com-
mittee was very much concerned with the
legislator whose district might be drawn
from under him. We discussed it at some
length and thus we have the majority
recommendation which permits a legislator
who is districted out of the district where
his residence is to run once again in any
district which contains 50 per cent of the
district which he formerly represented.
The minority maintains that this prob-
ably does not go far enough. I would like
to cite three cases. First of all, an in-
cumbent who is allowed to run once again
and is reelected, then is faced with the
problem of moving to keep his seat there-
after.
Secondly, there is a possibility that the
incumbent finds his former district was so
cut up that no new district contains 50
per cent of his old district. We played a
very interesting game in our district; you
can take a piece of paper or blackboard
and draw a district and then draw lots of
lines through it and it is very interesting
how you can gerrymander and slice a dis-
trict so that if you wish to have a district
that no longer has 50 per cent of the old
district, you can do it.
Thirdly, I would like to cite the person
who is not yet elected. A citizen who has
considered running for office, planned to
run for office, been active politically was
about to file, and suddenly his district was
drawn from under him. In all cases unfair-
ness has resulted.
These inequities lead us to suggest that
the district residency requirement should
be completely removed from the article.
We feel the result would be a fairer, simpler
article as far as the qualification for of-
fice is concerned.
The minority is well aware that our rec-
ommendation moves Maryland away from a
practice that dates from 185I and away
from the practice of all the other states.
But we submit this is a new problem
which other states will face in due time
because reapportionment is fairly new.
We are convinced that the district resi-
dence requirement is becoming an anachro-
nism. It is not our intent that representa-
tives should not really live in the district |
they represent, obviously we think they
should be close to the people and ideally
they should live there. But we feel strongly
that the time has come when we must
let the people have this responsibility to-
tally. We are convinced that with modern
means of communication and the increased
visibility of public officials which this Con-
vention is trying to achieve, that it will be
perfectly safe to leave it to the voters in a
district to prevent carpetbagging.
I point out to you at the Congressional
level we have never had district residence
requirements, and I do not think you can
cite many cases of abuse at the Congres-
sional level in this.
We do not feel the Convention should
overlook the problem of the officeholder or
would-be officeholder who lives on the pe-
riphery of a district. With 120 single mem-
ber districts being redrawn every ten years,
we do not want to leave the door open for
unfairness or gerrymandering.
Therefore, I urge the adoption of this
amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Are there any ques-
tions of the minority spokesman for the
purpose of clarification? Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: Delegate Hopkins,
would this proposal not run counter to the
theory of single districts which we heard
so much about yesterday?
DELEGATE HOPKINS: I do not quite
understand why.
DELEGATE CASE: As I understand it,
take my county, for example, Baltimore
County, under this proposal could you not
work up a ticket of people who did not
live in a particularly district so that you
would in effect not have the elected repre-
sentative from that district? Could you not
have the kind of political shenanigans that
Delegate Sickles was talking about yester-
day?
DELEGATE HOPKINS: Possibly this
could happen, but our case rests on the
fact that we think with the smaller dis-
tricts and a shorter ballot, you are less
likely to fool the people. This was one of
our big arguments for single member dis-
tricts: that we want smaller districts
where the voters will be more informed
about those running for office.
The reverse of this is that by political
shenanigans when the legislature redraws
the line, they could draw in or out for
those they either wanted to keep or get |
