The Senate is going to vote on it next week. But they already voted on a very similar bill in February and couldn’t get a majority much less the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.
You might want to rethink the wording on this one. As far as I know, citizens have never had their rights to marry someone of the opposite sex abridged based on sexual orientation.
You may be assuming that marriage means marriage to someone of the sex that one is attracted to, but you’d be talking past those who assume that marriage means marriage to someone of the opposite sex.
What the US really needs is a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing citizens the right to vote.
This is a fundamental issue. The definition of the Senate (2 senators per state) plus the artificial legislatively (not constitutionally) limit on the number of House members to 435 is essentially the mother of all gerrymanders. Add in the insanity of the Electoral College (whose numbers are derived from the first two issues) and, to put it bluntly, we’re fucked. If we could get a few of the sparsely populated states (I’m looking at you, Wyoming/Montana/Dakotas) to secede for a while maybe something could happen. I’d gladly carry my passport when I want to visit Yellowstone in exchange for a way out of this mess…
How about the Ninth Amendment; think we could get that one passed?
ISTR a Doper doing the math on this a while back – what the landscape would look like if the cap on House members was lifted and seats added on the basis of one rep per every “Wyoming.”
I don’t recall the exact results, but it wasn’t the blue wave you might expect, since Texas and Florida gained a bunch of seats as well. But it would give us a House that better represented everyone’s interests, and make it much less likely that presidents would be elected while losing the popular vote.
And we don’t need to amend the Constitution to make it happen!
The Senate is still a problem. The Dakota Territory (population 1.6 million) still gets 4 votes while California (25x the population) gets 2.
None of these thing should require a constitutional amendment and as long as we allow the court to be packed with justices who have engaged in a long term conspiracy to nullify established it wouldn’t do any good to change the constitution.
I don’t care if people think I’m crazy for saying so, but every one of those conservative justices swore to overturn Roe v. Wade if given the chance or they wouldn’t have been nominated in the first place. And let’s not forget the weak Democrats who didn’t challenge those judges who had a long history of their anti-abortion position and accepted their weasel like statements on the subject.
I think there is a fundamental problem here.
I certainly agree with all the OP’s proposals but I do not think a constitution should work that way.
To me, a constitution needs to be a broad set of values. It is not meant to detail very specific issues. If we go down that road we end up with a code of laws and not a constitution.
The constitution should guide how the country makes laws. The philosophy and ethics the country wants.
Of course, as we see with Alito, this can get badly perverted. A country founded with the notion that all men are created equal really has been anything but that. And the Alitos of the world fight against it at every turn. (and yes, I know that created equal bit was not in the constitution)
I am not sure how to resolve this. I think there is a philosophy the US aspires to that the Founding Fathers wanted. I think Alito and his ilk are working hard to make the country something else. Seemingly a white man utopia. Handmaid’s Tale for women and no one of color (or a subservient class).
The only other option I see that doesn’t destroy the country is to convince enough of our fellow citizens that what the Republicans are doing is morally wrong. Elect enough Democrats to impeach and convict Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett. That’s the within the law way of going about it. Of course that’s just as unlikely as passing those amendments I listed.
It’s not about what’s likely in the short term. It’s about surviving the short term, electing as many non-fascists as possible at each election, and then eventually turning the tide. The only way that happens is if everyone who isn’t fascist votes non-fascist rather than sitting at home on Election Day.
That’s by design- it ensures that smaller states aren’t plowed under by the Texases, Californias, Floridas and Pennsylvanias of the country.
I’m all for removing the 435 cap on Representatives; it does seem inequitable to let Wyoming’s single representative represent 578k people, while Montana’s is over 900k, and most states have somewhere around 700k per representative.
I’d also even go for more frequent censuses and reapportionments if that could be pulled off.
But I’d keep the Senate as it is; it’s not actually supposed to be a body that represents the people, but rather the States themselves- hence the 2 senators per state, regardless of population. I think the 17th Amendment confused the issue quite a bit, in that now there’s an element of popular representation that wasn’t there historically.
You are right, the senate isn’t designed to represent the people. The question is, why is a body that doesn’t represent the people necessary?
It was a mistake from the beginning to think the great difference in size between some states, whether in population or area, could be balanced out through the structure of the Senate. We are a long way from the days when Virginia was considered a large state. The concept of the House doesn’t work so great with the size of our population either. That leaves a bigger question, what kind of body could fairly represent the people of this country?
Right; for as much as people might complain about the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the minority is much, much worse.
It’s my opinion that part of this is because of the Supreme Court going ‘well it doesn’t actually say the government can do that in the constitution but it needs to be able to do that so the country can function, so let’s rule that this thing or that thing is ‘implied’ somewhere’. …going all the way back to the Supreme Court actually claiming jurisdiction for themselves in the first place.
If, from day 1, everything in the constitution had been interpreted as strictly and narrowly as possible, it would then have been absolutely necessary to amend it pretty regularly. Two or three a decade would probably have been the minimum needed in order to have the government continue to even function at all.
How about something along the lines of:
“All citizens of these United States shall be entitled to equal representation in the federal government. This representation shall not be reduced or increased based on the location of the citizen’s home, or any other factor.”
Might have to pass another one first that says “Any parts of the constitution which prevent the effect of future amendments taking place are henceforth invalidated.”
Because we have a Federal system. For good or ill, we’re not a unitary democracy, and instead are a union of semi-sovereign states.
And with that in mind, it’s sensible to have one house that the states are represented in as equals, and another where each state’s people are proportionally represented.
Most of the suggestions here are nonsense that would require a new Constitution, not just amending the existing one.
How about just passing the ERA?
Look at the fifteenth amendment. It was passed in 1870 and clearly gives Black Americans a right to vote that, in the South, was commonly denied for about 100 years.
The idea of guaranteeing our freedom, with what used to be called parchment promises, overriding the decisions of legislatures, is flawed. The only way to keep these freedoms is to convince Americans in every generation of their wisdom.
…those on the left that are staying home “out of apathy” will stay home out of apathy regardless of what you do because…apathy. They are apathetic. They show no feeling, no interest, enthusiasm, or concern.
It isn’t the apathetic that will turn the election. It is the disenfranchised. The marginalised, the people who have lost hope. They aren’t apathetic. They are fighting for their lives and they aren’t seeing anyone trying to fight alongside them.
Starting the process of amending the constitution would be nothing more than a political stunt. You pretty much concede that already. It would have zero chance of success.
And political stunts are not motivating. Just the opposite. Imagine watching the last line of defence against authoritarianism spend the last few months of democracy commit to a pointless, virtue-signalling exercise.
This is an emergency. You are outflanked on all sides by an enemy that is smarter than you, that has spent 30 years on a relatively simple strategy that has worked. One more push and they breach your lines…then it’s all over.
Two things need to be happening right now. The first is tactical. The second is strategic.
The first is they need to hold the line. Take the gloves off. Hold the house. Do everything they can to hold the Senate. Give finance and give support to the Democrats in the states to fight each battle as they see fit. Give them agency, then get out of the way. This is going to be trench warfare. Hand-to-hand. Give Stacey Abrams what she needs to take Georgia. Give Beto O’Rourke what he needs to try and take Texas. Put them in charge of everything. Find other people in other states for people to rally behind. Forget internal partisanship. Forget the way things used to be done. This is an emergency.
Secondly: they need to clean house. The current leadership is fundamentally incapable of winning this war. They don’t understand what is happening. They don’t understand how disinformation has destabilized the nation. They are acting like we are in normal times. But for the Republicans: this is the endgame. One, final push and they claim the kingdom.
So the way I see it: what needs to happen is that the tactical focus needs to be on holding the line until the next election. Strategically, after the next presidential election, the Democrats need new leadership.
It no longer makes that much sense now that members of the Supreme Court are unlikely to agree on the definition of a key word in the text, that word being women.
Another fraught word in the text is sex. Americans today are taught that there is big difference between between sex and gender. As worded, the ERA is trans exclusionist, or at least, that would be disputed in court with the outcome unknown.