Political what-if: A second Constitutional Convention

[robkelk]

This board's rules are "Have Fun, and Play Nice". It's time to have fun in this sub-forum.

If there was to be a second Constitutional Convention (Yes, you had one before -- almost nobody remembers the Articles of Confederation) called today, what would you like to see included in its results?

Here's my wish-list - implement all of these and you'll drag the political system in the USA kicking and screaming into the 20th century. (Yes, I know this is the 21st century. I'm not expecting a miracle to happen here.)

• Dissolve the Electoral College and have Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections by direct vote.
  
• Get rid of the time lag between the election and the taking of office, which leads to "lame duck" office-holders. Once the votes are counted, the winner takes office immediately. (FedEx and UPS can get packages anywhere in the USA overnight, and this internet posting was available to you as soon as I posted it; there's no need for a delay any more.) And "immediately" means immediately -- the Chief Justice is standing beside the person who announces the Presidential and Vice-Presidential vote totals, bound copy of the Constitution or religious book of the elected candidate's choice in hand, ready for the winners to take their oaths then and there.
  
• Each electoral district must be contiguous in and of itself. (This won't eliminate gerrymandering, but it'll reduce it.)
  
• In order to remove the appearance of conflict of interest, anybody who is responsible for drawing the boundaries of electoral districts must surrender the right to vote. (This won't eliminate gerrymandering, either, but it'll reduce it.)
  
• One from the Canadian model: Electoral district boundaries are to be drawn and elections are to be overseen by a civil service body made up solely of civil servants who have the power to spend whatever is necessary in order to ensure all elections are free and fair.
  
• One does not lose the right to vote simply because one is in jail. Anyone serving a term in a federal prison (owned by either the government or the private sector) is deemed to be resident at the person's last address of record before being arrested, or if the person had no address of record is deemed to be resident in the district where the arrest took place.
  
• Cap the total amount of money that any individual can contribute to all candidates and PACs put together, and forbid corporations and governments from contributing to candidates or PACs altogether.
  
• All Justices of the Supreme Court must retire from the Supreme Court at age 85.
  
• Separate the powers of the Head of Government and the Head of State. Let the Head of State handle all the ceremonial stuff (meeting with other Heads of State, pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey, holding parties in the Rose Garden, staging photo ops, etc.) and defend the Constitution from a Head of Government who's gone too far, and let the Head of Government concentrate of governing (meeting with other Heads of Government, working with the House and Senate Majority leaders to turn bills into law, issuing executive orders, etc.).
  
• The total hourly remuneration (salary and benefits added together) of a Congressperson may not exceed five times the legislated hourly minimum wage in that Congressperson's congressional district. Any benefit available at no charge to everyone in a Congressperson's congressional district does not count toward this salary and benefit cap. (It's taxpayer money that funds their salaries and benefits - no fair asking those taxpayers to fund putting a Congresscritter into The 1%.)
  

[Star Ranger4]

Hmm. I can get with most of those. Not as sure about the separating head of government and head of state, mostly because I am having trouble visualising it.

One thing I would add is that No elected governmental official can approve their own pay raise, nor may any of the states allow such. Any proposed increase in renumeration must be approved by a majority of the voters of the area affected before it will be enacted. This vote to take place during the next regularly scheduled election; and only one increase may be approved per election.

[Dartz]

This board's rules are "Have Fun, and Play Nice". It's time to have fun in this sub-forum.

If there was to be a second Constitutional Convention (Yes, you had one before -- almost nobody remembers the Articles of Confederation) called today, what would you like to see included in its results?

• Separate the powers of the Head of Government and the Head of State. Let the Head of State handle all the ceremonial stuff (meeting with other Heads of State, pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey, holding parties in the Rose Garden, staging photo ops, etc.) and defend the Constitution from a Head of Government who's gone too far, and let the Head of Government concentrate of governing (meeting with other Heads of Government, working with the House and Senate Majority leaders to turn bills into law, issuing executive orders, etc.).
  
• The total hourly remuneration (salary and benefits added together) of a Congressperson may not exceed five times the legislated hourly minimum wage in that Congressperson's congressional district. Any benefit available at no charge to everyone in a Congressperson's congressional district does not count toward this salary and benefit cap. (It's taxpayer money that funds their salaries and benefits - no fair asking those taxpayers to fund putting a Congresscritter into The 1%.)
  

Neutering the presidency is a big one -  the executive is unusually powerful compared to most countries, in effect nearly a dictatorship. The Presidency should set the tone of the nation, set the mood in a crisis, make soothing mouth noises to the people when there're ructions and have the power to check the government, but not to overule it. The US Presidency is worryingly close to an elected dictatorship - with the ability to almost rule by decree and send the army in through constitutional workarounds.


Also. Proportional Representation rather than that idiotic melange of FPP  - both reduces the impact of Gerrymandering and ensure everyone gets the candidate they'll tolerate, rather than some getting the one they want. It'll be shot down because it makes it harder for one particular side to get themselves elected for sure.

[robkelk]

Not as sure about the separating head of government and head of state, mostly because I am having trouble visualising it.

All you need to do here is look at the UK: the Queen is the Head of State and the Prime Minister is the Head of Government.

[DHBirr]

The Department of Justice needs to be taken out of the Executive Branch and become part of the Judicial.   This includes the President having no authority to appoint the Attorney General.  A new AG, or perhaps a choice of potential AGs, could be nominated by his/her predecessor, with input from the Supreme Court to narrow down the list, and final approval by Congress.  At most, a president should be permitted to raise an objection to a particular AG candidate, or later to specific actions by a currently serving AG, such objections then to be voted upon by Congress — and possibly overruled by SCOTUS. 

The President should also lack any vestige of authority to nominate justices, even to the lowest courts, much less SCOTUS.  Instead, all such nominations would be by serving judges, usually of higher courts.  These candidates would then be voted on by Congress — and refusing to even hold hearings, as McConnell did to the Garland nomination, would result in the candidate being automatically appointed as a rebuke of Congress's dereliction of duty.  

These changes would firm up the independence of the Justice Department and the Judiciary from the Executive.  "'My' Supreme Court; 'my' Attorney General"?  No way, hombre.

[Norgarth]

Not as sure about the separating head of government and head of state, mostly because I am having trouble visualising it.

All you need to do here is look at the UK: the Queen is the Head of State and the Prime Minister is the Head of Government.

but the US has no single family to act as head of state, so who would do the job?  There'd be lots of people trying to become head of government, but very few trying to be head of state (and how many of those would actually be capable?)

[nocarename]

Do it like India.

Elect the President, as head of state, separately from [insert title here], as Head of Government - if you don't have the Houses of Congress choose the head of government as a Prime Minister or General Secretary or what have you.

The real advantage is that because the Head of State has limited duties, it doesn't break anything if they have to be fired for whatever reason, and that the Head of Government is in theory just a regular person with a government job, so there is reason not to apply regular laws to them so you skip over any requirements for immunity.

[hazard]

This board's rules are "Have Fun, and Play Nice". It's time to have fun in this sub-forum.

If there was to be a second Constitutional Convention (Yes, you had one before -- almost nobody remembers the Articles of Confederation) called today, what would you like to see included in its results?

Here's my wish-list - implement all of these and you'll drag the political system in the USA kicking and screaming into the 20th century. (Yes, I know this is the 21st century. I'm not expecting a miracle to happen here.)

Well, let's see. Here's my inexpert opinion.

[*]Dissolve the Electoral College and have Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections by direct vote.

Seems sensible, although you'll probably want to determine how you define 'direct vote'. Do you mean 'state wide popular votes, count by state', or 'nation wide popular vote', or 'US citizen wide popular vote'. It matters a fair bit.

Puerto Rico currently does not have any capacity to vote for the US presidential election, despite it being bigger than several states of the US combined. Nor for that matter does DC IIRC.

[*]Get rid of the time lag between the election and the taking of office, which leads to "lame duck" office-holders. Once the votes are counted, the winner takes office immediately. (FedEx and UPS can get packages anywhere in the USA overnight, and this internet posting was available to you as soon as I posted it; there's no need for a delay any more.) And "immediately" means immediately -- the Chief Justice is standing beside the person who announces the Presidential and Vice-Presidential vote totals, bound copy of the Constitution or religious book of the elected candidate's choice in hand, ready for the winners to take their oaths then and there.

Sorry, the lag isn't completely stupid. That doesn't mean it should be the months of delay it currently is, of course, but taking a few weeks to a month to brief the incoming administration, make sure they have the right security clearances and all the other things necessary for a smooth transfer of power is wise.

[*]Each electoral district must be contiguous in and of itself. (This won't eliminate gerrymandering, but it'll reduce it.)

This one's already true. Yes, every accursed gerrymandered blot on the map is contiguous, even if it's only connected by a single road. You'd have better luck by requiring that electoral districts must be drawn as compact as possible. It makes it harder to draw districts that are certain to vote one way or another on the average. Even betterer than that is turning every state into a 1 district state with requirements on how many polling stations there must be per however many people and/or maximum travel distances to and from polling stations.

Even a partial bundling of representation (not state wide, necessarily, but something like per 10 or 20 representatives) would help break the 2 party dead lock simply because now there are options beyond 'winner takes all regardless of how thin the margin'.

[*]In order to remove the appearance of conflict of interest, anybody who is responsible for drawing the boundaries of electoral districts must surrender the right to vote. (This won't eliminate gerrymandering, either, but it'll reduce it.)

Which right, the active or the passive (that is, the right to cast a ballot or the right to be elected).

[*]One from the Canadian model: Electoral district boundaries are to be drawn and elections are to be overseen by a civil service body made up solely of civil servants who have the power to spend whatever is necessary in order to ensure all elections are free and fair.

Even better is turning electoral districts into administrative areas rather than something power can be drawn from. The English electoral model with first past the post representation is famously non-functional.

[*]One does not lose the right to vote simply because one is in jail. Anyone serving a term in a federal prison (owned by either the government or the private sector) is deemed to be resident at the person's last address of record before being arrested, or if the person had no address of record is deemed to be resident in the district where the arrest took place.

Or the address of the jail. If nothing else, it makes it easier to administratively track where ballots need to go. Yes, this incentivizes pushing all prisoners into a single district for first past the post system, that's part of why you break the first past the post system.

[*]Cap the total amount of money that any individual can contribute to all candidates and PACs put together, and forbid corporations and governments from contributing to candidates or PACs altogether.

Another option is that prior to the election a party can petition to run, and any party with a large enough support on the petition (say, a number of autographs) will be provided a government mandated budget for their election. No other resources other than that government mandated budget may be used for election purposes, and any excess funds left over must be returned to the government.

Likewise, constitutionally requiring that any organization giving or receiving funds to or from election campaigns, PACs or similar entities to publish in real time the movement of the money would help a lot. Private individuals, of course, would be capped, and at 1 day's wage at the minimum wage and presuming 8 hours of work.

[*]All Justices of the Supreme Court must retire from the Supreme Court at age 85.

Also, no Justice of the Supreme Court may be seated for longer than 10 years per stint on the Supreme Court.

[*]Separate the powers of the Head of Government and the Head of State. Let the Head of State handle all the ceremonial stuff (meeting with other Heads of State, pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey, holding parties in the Rose Garden, staging photo ops, etc.) and defend the Constitution from a Head of Government who's gone too far, and let the Head of Government concentrate of governing (meeting with other Heads of Government, working with the House and Senate Majority leaders to turn bills into law, issuing executive orders, etc.).

You won't ever see this happen in the US. There's simply too much political power vested in the president being the Head of State, that the president as Head of Government won't want to give up.

[*]The total hourly remuneration (salary and benefits added together) of a Congressperson may not exceed five times the legislated hourly minimum wage in that Congressperson's congressional district. Any benefit available at no charge to everyone in a Congressperson's congressional district does not count toward this salary and benefit cap. (It's taxpayer money that funds their salaries and benefits - no fair asking those taxpayers to fund putting a Congresscritter into The 1%.)

Or the federal minimum wage, whichever is lower. Any district with no minimum wage is considered to have established a minimum wage of $0.00.

I'll note that at 5 times minimum wage, presuming 15 dollars as the minimum wage, is only 75 dollars. And yes, that's a lot of money, per hour. But it may be a little too little, once you account for the fact that a Congresscritter has a lot of responsibilities, and often works long hours, with the expectation that they are on call for emergency work regardless of their own desires.

On the other hand, maybe that should be considered only for hours the Congresscritter is attending the people's business. Time spent working for the party (like begging for donations) or for their own interests (like begging for donations) should not be counted.



Oh, as for the Head of State thing; IIRC both France and Germany have elected heads of state that are not the head of government.

[hazard]

The Department of Justice needs to be taken out of the Executive Branch and become part of the Judicial.   This includes the President having no authority to appoint the Attorney General.  A new AG, or perhaps a choice of potential AGs, could be nominated by his/her predecessor, with input from the Supreme Court to narrow down the list, and final approval by Congress.  At most, a president should be permitted to raise an objection to a particular AG candidate, or later to specific actions by a currently serving AG, such objections then to be voted upon by Congress — and possibly overruled by SCOTUS. 

The President should also lack any vestige of authority to nominate justices, even to the lowest courts, much less SCOTUS.  Instead, all such nominations would be by serving judges, usually of higher courts.  These candidates would then be voted on by Congress — and refusing to even hold hearings, as McConnell did to the Garland nomination, would result in the candidate being automatically appointed as a rebuke of Congress's dereliction of duty.  

These changes would firm up the independence of the Justice Department and the Judiciary from the Executive.  "'My' Supreme Court; 'my' Attorney General"?  No way, hombre.

Ehm, you realize that the problem isn't that the DOJ is part of the executive branch, but that there's somebody who can tell the DOJ to take up or drop certain cases?

And in some cases, that's actually a good thing! Sometimes it really is interest of the people for a case not to be pursued or for it to be pursued extensively.

The problem is when the fellow who can tell the DOJ what to do does so for political purposes rather than the people's best interests, and it doesn't really matter whose signature is on the bottom line in that case.

[robkelk]

This board's rules are "Have Fun, and Play Nice". It's time to have fun in this sub-forum.

If there was to be a second Constitutional Convention (Yes, you had one before -- almost nobody remembers the Articles of Confederation) called today, what would you like to see included in its results?

Here's my wish-list - implement all of these and you'll drag the political system in the USA kicking and screaming into the 20th century. (Yes, I know this is the 21st century. I'm not expecting a miracle to happen here.)

Well, let's see. Here's my inexpert opinion.

[*]Dissolve the Electoral College and have Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections by direct vote.

Seems sensible, although you'll probably want to determine how you define 'direct vote'. Do you mean 'state wide popular votes, count by state', or 'nation wide popular vote', or 'US citizen wide popular vote'. It matters a fair bit.

Puerto Rico currently does not have any capacity to vote for the US presidential election, despite it being bigger than several states of the US combined. Nor for that matter does DC IIRC.

It's long past time to stop disenfranchising the territories. US citizen wide popular vote.

[*]In order to remove the appearance of conflict of interest, anybody who is responsible for drawing the boundaries of electoral districts must surrender the right to vote. (This won't eliminate gerrymandering, either, but it'll reduce it.)

Which right, the active or the passive (that is, the right to cast a ballot or the right to be elected).

I meant the active, but let's include the passive as well.

[*]One does not lose the right to vote simply because one is in jail. Anyone serving a term in a federal prison (owned by either the government or the private sector) is deemed to be resident at the person's last address of record before being arrested, or if the person had no address of record is deemed to be resident in the district where the arrest took place.

Or the address of the jail. If nothing else, it makes it easier to administratively track where ballots need to go. Yes, this incentivizes pushing all prisoners into a single district for first past the post system, that's part of why you break the first past the post system.

Using the address of the jail incentivizes putting all inmates in a single district, no matter what electoral system one uses, in that all of their votes would apply only to a single district's elections.

As for tracking where ballots need to go, that's a solved problem with the current mail-in ballot system.

[*]Separate the powers of the Head of Government and the Head of State. Let the Head of State handle all the ceremonial stuff (meeting with other Heads of State, pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey, holding parties in the Rose Garden, staging photo ops, etc.) and defend the Constitution from a Head of Government who's gone too far, and let the Head of Government concentrate of governing (meeting with other Heads of Government, working with the House and Senate Majority leaders to turn bills into law, issuing executive orders, etc.).

You won't ever see this happen in the US. There's simply too much political power vested in the president being the Head of State, that the president as Head of Government won't want to give up.

Which is exactly why it needs to happen.

[*]The total hourly remuneration (salary and benefits added together) of a Congressperson may not exceed five times the legislated hourly minimum wage in that Congressperson's congressional district. Any benefit available at no charge to everyone in a Congressperson's congressional district does not count toward this salary and benefit cap. (It's taxpayer money that funds their salaries and benefits - no fair asking those taxpayers to fund putting a Congresscritter into The 1%.)

Or the federal minimum wage, whichever is lower. Any district with no minimum wage is considered to have established a minimum wage of $0.00.

I'll note that at 5 times minimum wage, presuming 15 dollars as the minimum wage, is only 75 dollars. And yes, that's a lot of money, per hour. But it may be a little too little, once you account for the fact that a Congresscritter has a lot of responsibilities, and often works long hours, with the expectation that they are on call for emergency work regardless of their own desires.

On the other hand, maybe that should be considered only for hours the Congresscritter is attending the people's business. Time spent working for the party (like begging for donations) or for their own interests (like begging for donations) should not be counted.

That's why I said hourly remuneration - somebody who's putting in extra hours working for their constituents will earn more than somebody putting in only a 40-hour work week and then going off to fundraise or schmooze.

[hazard]

Using the address of the jail incentivizes putting all inmates in a single district, no matter what electoral system one uses, in that all of their votes would apply only to a single district's elections.

As for tracking where ballots need to go, that's a solved problem with the current mail-in ballot system.

That using the jail's address incentivizes putting all inmates into a single district is irrelevant so long as there is only 1 district.

And I wouldn't trust a mail in ballot system that's supposed to track where the ballot's supposed to go, both ways, when it comes to inmates in any jail, penitentiary institution or other place of confinement.

[robkelk]

Using the address of the jail incentivizes putting all inmates in a single district, no matter what electoral system one uses, in that all of their votes would apply only to a single district's elections.

As for tracking where ballots need to go, that's a solved problem with the current mail-in ballot system.

That using the jail's address incentivizes putting all inmates into a single district is irrelevant so long as there is only 1 district.

So, do you want every member of Congress to be elected at-large, the way the President and Vice-President would be? If not, then I don't understand what you're saying here.

And I wouldn't trust a mail in ballot system that's supposed to track where the ballot's supposed to go, both ways, when it comes to inmates in any jail, penitentiary institution or other place of confinement.

Why shouldn't inmates receive mail?

[hazard]

So, do you want every member of Congress to be elected at-large, the way the President and Vice-President would be? If not, then I don't understand what you're saying here.

Basically. The Netherlands has many voting districts, but only administratively. All elected members of any government body are elected by all voters, with the votes tallied and distributed according to list transferable vote. (The Senate is an exception, which is composed by the provincial governments. It's mostly a rubber stamp body for legislation.)

Another option would be to create combined delegations, with a subdivision of any representation being elected at the same time and sending representatives according to a proportionality system.

Interestingly, the USA could stuff every inmate into a single voting district for, say, the House of Representatives. Under the current system that district would promptly be broken into 3(ish, rounding errors) districts and send 3 representatives to Congress, if inmates had the right to vote.

Why shouldn't inmates receive mail?

Should they receive mail? Yes. Would they receive and be able to send mail? That I'm less certain of. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if more than 1 enterprising member of the correctional staff decides that the inmates clearly don't know how to vote right and... corrects those votes. Or just loses them.

I have considerable trust in US law enforcement. It's not a nice trust.

[Norgarth]

Hazard, you seem to be vastly underestimating the difficulties of having every one in the US vote for all the senators/Congress-persons out of a common pool. It may work in the Netherlands, but the 4 largest cities in the US (NY, LA, Chicago, and Houstan) by themselves. total more people than the Neatherlands as a whole.

Additionally there's the sheer distance involved. You expect people on one coast to have any clue about politicians from the other coast stand for or suoort? The Distance from New York to LA is less than 100KM short of the distance from Dublin to Baghdad.

[hazard]

If you argue that distance should not be a factor in electing and elevating a single representative (the president in this case) the moment results come in you should not argue it matters when electing several hundred representatives. And I did say that combining election districts so that at least you never vote for a single member to represent a district was also an option. Congress has 435 voting representatives in the House of Representatives and 6 non-voting. Each, under the current system, has their own district, which elects through a first past the post system.

Combining them so you have 44 contiguous voting districts, each electing 10 representatives from among their population would go a long way towards breaking the deadlock US politics has historically been in.


And there are tools to help people figure out what way they want to vote. Voting guides are a thing, and they can help check on the basis of a party's avowed agenda and their voting record as to which parties most closely align with your own interests.

[classicdrogn]

For my part, I'd like to permanently and explicitly break the two-party system. Maybe make it so members of a single party may not hold more than 40% of any particular voting body? Whether the body as a whole, or how many of them show up on a particular day to vote. That would still allow for committee sizes as small as 5. This would open up the possibility of a minority deciding not to participate and deadlocking things for lack of a quorum, though, so maybe allow for a 60% supermajority of the total body to make one-time-per-vote exceptions in order to deal with obstructionist behavior.

[robkelk]

I've found that the lower the amount of money any one party is allowed to raise, the more parties there are in total - the "big two" or "big three" parties can't drive up the price of advertising time to the point where the smaller parties can't afford to purchase any. Hence my suggestion of putting a cap on how much any one person can donate to parties.

[ECSNorway]

I've found that the lower the amount of money any one party is allowed to raise, the more parties there are in total - the "big two" or "big three" parties can't drive up the price of advertising time to the point where the smaller parties can't afford to purchase any. Hence my suggestion of putting a cap on how much any one person can donate to parties.

I have to agree, here. I'm somewhat in support of the movement towards federal/taxpayer funding of elections in general - where any party who gets enough votes to get their critter on the ballot gets a certain fixed amount of credit towards TV ads, newspaper spots, etc, all of it explicitly allocated towards what type of thing it can be used for. Anything you want to do beyond that, you do fundraising for. With a cap on the amount per person, and no corporate donations whatsoever.

(The utter scam that is 'corporate personhood' needs to die in a fire, but that's a different thread.)

The gerrymandering issue is a thing that definitely needs to be addressed but just how to go about it is clearly difficult or it would have been fixed by now. Random thought on it is to use current county boundaries, with representative numbers allocated by county and elected at-large by the citizens of that county. Or, for that matter, go to at-large-by-state election of representatives (using some ranked voting system) while Senators return to being appointed by the state legislatures.

I think there's a certain level of "too much" at the federal level, really -- that local district needs should be handled at the state level, not federally. A Congressional representative should be speaking for just the state, not a particular district in it, and things internal to the state handled by the state legislature.