UPDATED (7:23 p.m.)—A bill redrawing eight congressional districts in Maryland moved one step closer to final passage in the Senate with a 33-13 vote Monday night.
The vote, taken nearly an hour after a specially appointed 15-member Senate committee voted late Monday afternoon to approve Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan, was anticlimactic. Republicans offered just one amendment to the bill in a debate that lasted minutes rather than hours.
Sen. E.J. Pipkin's amendment would have stripped out O'Malley's plan in favor of Pipkin's, which added a third majority minority district and kept intact the two Republican districts.
In the end, the Senate voted 13-33 to kill the amendment.
Sen. Jim Brochin, of Towson, was the lone Democrat joining Republicans on both votes.
Earlier in the afternoon, a special Senate committee voted 10-4 along party lines to move O'Malley's plan to a preliminary vote scheduled for 6 p.m. Sen. Joanne Benson, a Democrat from Prince George's County, was not present for the committee vote.
The same committee voted to reject three alternative plans offered up by state Senate Republicans.
There was no debate on any of the bills.
"It's a done deal," said Harford County Sen. Nancy Jacobs. "Why waste everyone's time talking?"
The House of Delegates will not take up the redistricting bills until Tuesday at the earliest.
Jacobs later asked Miller to delay a final vote on the redistricting plan until tomorrow.
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That aside, it would be nice to actually see the maps side by side (current and redrawn)
http://www.mdp.state.md.us/Redistricting/redistrictingIMap.shtml
Senator Jacobs is right, why bother to debate when Senator Miller said his goal was to bury the Republican party so deep it will take 10 years to dig themselves out. The Governor's plan has one goal in mind...keep Maryland firmly in control of one party. He has no horse in this race anymore, he has his sights set on Washington. Baltimore and Annapolis has served his purpose, get him in the national spotlight.
Keep voting one party in to power all the while enjoying your poverty soaked crime ridden welfare capital of state. Yeah lets bury the republicans we'll show them. You fricken morons.
That being said how can you say Republicans debate with hated when Mike Miller stated that he wanted to bury the Republicans so deep it will take 10 years for them to dig themselves out. To me that shows that Miller is NOT a statesman, he is a political hack who puts his own interests in front of the interests of his constituents. He didn't want slots when it was an R idea but he thought it was great when it was a D idea. Statesman??? I think not. Check how he voted on the liquor tax and then see why he was for it. The distributors aren't the ones getting taxed. My point was and still is o'malley's gerrymandered districts ensures that Maryland will keep the same Old Boy Network in politics. If you are happy with how the Dems have "shaped" Maryland well...I am not.
So typical.