Md. voters could opt for constitutional convention

Posted: 7:48 pm Wed, February 3, 2010
By Associated Press

ANNAPOLIS — Hey, Maryland voters! Do you want to hold a constitutional convention? Every 20 years the opportunity comes up to call one, and 2010 is one of those years.

State law requires a referendum on the ballot every two decades allowing voters to elect citizens to make changes to the constitution. A Senate committee on Wednesday approved a bill ordering the Maryland State Board of Elections to put the question on the November 2010 ballot.

A convention has never been called under the 20-year cycle provision, which dates to 1851, said Dan Friedman, the attorney general’s designated counsel to the General Assembly and an expert on the issue. Conventions were held out of cycle in 1776, 1851, 1864, 1867 and 1967.

A convention would be called if approved by a majority of all voters who come to the polls. That is a significant qualifier because many voters will vote for offices at the top of the ticket, like governor or congress, and skip ballot questions near the bottom. So a convention could still fall short of the majority of all ballots cast, even if those who do vote on that issue support it.

Friedman, who has written a book about the state constitution and has studied the process, said voters generally need a strong reason to call a constitutional convention.

“There has to be a good reason — a galvanizing issue — and the political leadership has to get behind it,” Friedman said. Friedman wouldn’t venture a guess as to what would happen this year.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said he didn’t believe the state needed a convention now.

“I do remember a very long and costly constitutional convention in the ’60s and it was put to the people and the people rejected it,” Miller told reporters. “I don’t think we need at this time to go through, you know, such an exercise in futility.”

The 20-year interval is based on a maxim by Thomas Jefferson that government needed to be renewed every generation, Friedman said, and many state constitutions have similar provisions.

In 1930 and 1950, a majority of Maryland residents who voted on the question supported calling a convention, but they were not a majority of voters who cast ballots in those elections, so conventions were not held. In 1970 and 1990, there wasn’t enough voter interest.

If one were held, 188 residents would be elected to be delegates to the convention — one person for each delegate and senator in the Maryland General Assembly who represent the state’s 47 legislative districts. It would be held in the State House in Annapolis, and the convention could last for months.

“They go on and on and on, and at the end they make compromises and come up with a document that they then have to put on the ballot and the people have to approve,” Friedman said.

Maryland voters last approved holding a constitutional convention after Gov. John Millard Tawes pushed in 1967 to hold one. That was several years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maryland’s legislative districting violated the U.S. Constitution’s one-person, one-vote requirement. In that convention, delegates were chosen in a nonpartisan election.

While it was held out of sequence with the 20-year provision, the state’s highest court ruled it was constitutional. Although the convention came up with changes, voters ended up rejecting them on the ballot. Many of the changes were later adopted in constitutional amendments.