1892. ] OF THE SENATE.. 611

they may do so under a proper construction of the
Statute, by failing to furnish ballots in such district
or by seeing to it that the ballots, alter being prepared,
by some misadventure never reach their destination.

It will say to the voter, "your rights are no longer
your own, but the Act of 1890, chapter 538, has placed
them in the hands of Boards of Supervisors, upon

whose generous but partisan discretion their exercise

depends. "

It will say to the public we have passed a law whose
design was to protect and secure the sacred right of
suffrage, but whose result, under a proper construction,
is to violate the Constitution and destroy that right.

Legal astuteness and fine-spun technicality may in-
vent a construction to escape the fair and just results
of this election, but the invention will arise to plague
the party of the inventor, and even-handed justice
may in the future commend the poisoned chalice to
their own lips.

The sad death of the contestee renders a discussion
of the question as to whether there is a vacancy or
not, unnecessary in the report. The vacancy now
exists and the Constitution of the State, in section 13,
of Article 3, provides the means of filling it at once.

It may be proper to add that nothing in this whole
proceeding connected the contestee even remotely
with the infamous frauds perpetrated in said election.
He goes to his untimely grave with a reputation un-
tarnished in this matter by the faintest whisper of
suspicion.

For the above reasons I respectfully submit that
the following propositions are established by the law
and the facts in this case.

1st. That there was fraud in the election in the 2nd
precinct of the first district of Calvert county, held
Nov. 3rd, 1891, and that the party of the contestee
could alone have been benefitted thereby.

2nd. That said fraud failed of its devilish purpose,
and did not vitiate said election, but that the same
was legal in all respects, and that Samuel R. Bird,
the contestant, having received 350 of the 378 votes
cast at said election in said precinct, which gives him
a majority of 151 in the county, is entitled to a seat
in the Senate of Maryland, from Calvert county.