There are a lot of complaints floating around about how the US government is broken, or how our system is flawed that creates or exacerbates the dysfunction. I created a thread over in GD about how to remake our government from the ground up. I’m talking a new Constitutional Convention level of imagination. Obviously, that’s fantasy.
I think we should have a sister thread for realistic changes to our government that might actually be implementable. Maybe challenging with the government we currently have and the current officeholders and political parties, but things that could conceivably be implemented under the current Constitution and framework.
Low hanging fruit would be making the electoral votes in each state dermined by the popular vote in that state. A larger ask is getting rid of the Electoral College altogether and using national popular vote.
Really, the biggest problem is that any major change, however necessary, has become impossible in the US. So I’m not sure anything is practical at this point. But fixing the government is nevertheless a lot easier on the conceptual level than creating an entirely new one. How about we start with fixing what is actually tearing the country apart right now?
Fixing the Supreme Court. Fortunately, this can be accomplished with legislation and not a constitutional amendment. There is a lot of work to be done here, but it’s been discussed elsewhere. This includes unfucking a bunch of stupid/corrupt decisions, such as Dobbs,Citizens United, etc.
Eliminating the Electoral College. This is a huge cancer on the country and needs to go sooner rather than later.
Eliminating the Senate. The Constitution specifically says:
I would think that all states have zero senators would be “equal.”
Is there anything actually good about the senate right now? In addition to be undemocratic, it seems like a body that exists mainly to prevent anything from getting done.
Rationalizing state and local borders. I think states are dumb as they currently exist, and once we eliminate the Electoral College and Senate their differing populations will do less damage, but at least we can break up some of the bigger once and combine some of the low-population ones, etc.
Wow, an opportunity to apply Ockham’s razor whilst wearing rose tinted glasses:
And I think most of these could be done without Constitutional amendment.
State borders remain as currently gazetted at least initially.
New states can be admitted to the union after winning a plebiscite and presenting their petition while demonstrating they meet practical minimum standards of population, political infrastructure and financial stability to be a viable entity, and formally endorsed by a 2/3rds majority vote of combined House/Senate at joint sitting.
Existing states can merge or divide within the Union at will provided all new entities meet the standards applicable for new states.
States can leave the union only after winning a war of independence or peaceably by surrendering/dismantling all US federal facilities, returning all federal equipment, establishing a formal customs and tariff barriers regime with the continuing union and forgoing US federal entitlements in perpetuity. I’d include a provision for the return of a prodigal state if meeting the prerequisites of a new state, just for sentimentality.
Each State is allocated one Federal Senator plus additional Senators based on their proportion of national population rounded up.
Each State is allocated Federal House representation in based on their proportion of national population rounded up.
Establish the USEC (United States Electoral Commission) with equivalent independence and non-partisan modus operandi as seen with the FDA.
The USEC oversees all elections within the Republic. Maintains the national and state electoral rolls. Ensures all state and national elections are conducted in equivalent manner and integrity. Charged with minimising gerrymander in electoral districts. Removing first-past-the-post in favour of an appropriate proportional representation system ie preference, IRV, whatever. Removing winner-takes-all as measure for determining electoral results.
Elections for each States Senate and House federal representation are by multi-member single statewide electorate. This will allow increased political participation of multiple national, regional and single-issue political parties, and demonstrate this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Electoral College remains as a virtual entity for determining the Presidency but each State’s electoral numbers are equal to HoR plus Senate. ie some electoral disproportion remains but much reduced on current.
SCOTUS has the same term limits as Circuit courts with nominated candidates being a minimum 40yo at nomination and retirement on or before their 75th birth day but any nomination to SCOTUS has a prerequisite of say 8 years presiding in the Circuit courts. All nominees require the endorsement of their “home” Circuit.
Separate positions of Head of State and Head of Government with the House Majority Leader becoming Head of Government. The Executive cedes legislative primacy to the Legislators of the House and Senate. The Executive retains primacy in foreign affairs, defence and treasury oversight. I’d include health and education oversight too but probably a bridge too far.
I agree fixing the SC is high priority, but how do we do that? What changes can be made and how do they improve the situation.
Biden has now proposed term limits and each President appointing two Justices per term. I would like to understand this better.
While I think a vast number of Americans agree, it is embedded in the Constitution, and as you say, that’s a practical impossibility. The singular advantage of the system is to give low population States some balance off representation. But as it is now, that’s not what it does. Instead, it shuffles power to the two- party system.
We talk about Red and Blue states, and Purple states. Take Texas as an example. We have a growing dem population in the urban areas, but the majority in the state are conservative (or reactionary), and they have sufficiently rugged the system such that the liberal vote is diluted. With winner take all EC, that means the GOP has a lock on the outcome for Texas.
Other states are dominated by dems. It’s the states with roughly balanced population that haven’t gerrymandered the opposition that now control the outcome of the Presidential election. Low population States still don’t really matter because even if they are in play, they don’t carry many EC votes.
Direct popular vote by the population nationwide kills that gamesmanship and gives rural, low population areas fair representation. It does so at the expense of state power.
The Electoral College was intended as a way to stem populists from gaining power, by setting up a two layer system where the President is elected by our wiser halves.
The state split-out of electors wouldn’t matter if the electors were actually doing what they were supposed to. Whether someone comes from California or Kentucky, if they’re a wiser sort, they’re not voting for Trump or any other crank candidate.
And there’s no limit of evidence that populists can come into power through the popular vote, regardless that our current option might not, and that populist leaders are always horrible and wreck the countries they lead. Getting rid of the electoral college, rather than fixing it, is exactly the wrong thing to do. More populism isn’t the fix when your problem is too much populism.
“Faithless” elector laws should be removed, the electors votes should be taken secretly, gerrymandering should be banned, the ability for states to bundle their electoral votes all a single direction should be banned, and the media should start focusing less on the Presidential election and instead turn their focus to the electors elections.
Fortunately, it can be done through simple legislation, since the number of justices is not fixed. I have suggested giving Congress veto power over a mad SC decision.
Right. And I think states are dumb, so the less power to 'em. Your example of blue cities in red states is pertinent: why should the real drivers of the economy and culture have to submit to the will of fascist hicks?
These can all be accomplished by state law, but except for gerrymandering, there isn’t political will to do so. And in the case of gerrymandering, the current strategy is to openly ignore the ban and court orders and then say, “oh, it’s too late to change the map now!”
Wait a sec. The Orange Christ got in precisely because of the Electoral College–so getting rid of it is the solution? I don’t see how retaining the EC helps prevent a populist president. Right now, it gives excess power to the red states, who have been voting J for Jackass for decades now, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
I want to eliminate the EC because it’s undemocratic and needlessly complicated. Your solution for fixing it is likewise complicated. It’s like trying to polish a mechanical turd: too many moving, melting parts.
Let’s say that I measure the excitement to go out and everyone says, “Nah.” I write that down. The political will to go out is zero.
Next, I propose, “Let’s go to Disneyland!”
Now, I look at the political will report that I compiled a few moments earlier, before I asked about Disneyland. “Nope, I see that none of you are interested. Can’t do Disneyland.”
If you need political will before considering new ideas then, de facto, there will never be new ideas out and about, trying to recruit political will. Consequently, you will never get Disneyland.
You’re free to do that, but I’d ask you what good you think you’re doing yourself with the catch-22 methodology?
Yes, there’s been 200 years of the states and the parties trying to break the thing, so that it fails to do what it was meant to do.
Imagine, for example, that you have a flood barrier and, for 200 years, you’ve got various teams of goblins working to adjust the flood barrier to deflect water from their tree and away from their allies, and towards their enemies. Over time, you’ve got a hodge-podge of barriers that are skewed all higgledy-piggledy and doing little better than nothing at all.
Now, personally, I’d say that letting the goblins interfere is the issue. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a flood barrier. Flood barriers are good, when set up to block and minimize the outcomes of floods. Abandoning the whole concept and just letting the floods fuck you over just as hard as the goblins were trying to do is not the right answer.
If you ask someone, “Do you want more power?” Nearly everyone will say, “Yes.” Political leaders, over 200 years, have downplayed the intentions of the Framers to set up a compromise government that moderates the popular passions and tries to maintain some amount of rationality and calmness in their approach to managing our public systems. They’ve sold you on the idea that the majority should win, dominate, and have their way - screw all precedent, reasonability, or constraint. That’s how they get you to vote for them, by promising to empower your vote for your preferred goblin team who will work so hard to smash the enemy goblins. Compromise and slow-steady movements are for losers. Anything less than a continuous path towards direct democracy is just back-room scheming to empower private interests.
But that’s all propaganda. I’m not getting paid a single buck to make this message. There are ways to get rid of the power of private interests and ways to reduce popular passions, both, without any loss to society. Direct democracy is not that path and methods to get closer to it just increase the possibility of more, better-equipped Donald Trumps taking over the nation.
Theoretically, political will notwithstanding what I would do is
reform the Supreme Court, adding a rigorous and enforced code of ethics, term limits, and double the number of justices.
get rid of Citizens United, and initiate severe reforms in political fundraising such that all donations over $1000 must be published in national media. No dark money.
No electoral college. States would be eliminated as entities other than ballot collection apparati. One person, one vote, period.
All state voting precincts drawn by non-partisan committees. No gerrymandering.
These would not fix the US government, but they’d be a big improvement.
.We already have that. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said for years that the Row v Wade decision was week and that Congress needed to pass a law enshrining the right to an abortion. Congress didn’t have the will to do it - “Legal is the law; why should we piss off half of our voters?”. Since Dobbs, they haven’t had the will to pass a national law, leaving it to the states - “why should we put our necks on the line?” Congress already has the veto power - it can pass legislation; they choose not to do it. Or, more properly, half of Congress has a do-nothing philosophy and refuses to do it.
I could buy this, maybe, if there were some Golden Age of the Electoral College that we could look back on and sigh with longing at. It seems there was not:
Faithless electors have rarely appeared, and in the two elections in which they could have made a difference (both involving the vice president, not the president), they didn’t. The last instance was in 1836.
Later, although not involving faithless electors, we had the huge mess of the 1876 election, owing more or less completely to the shitty EC. Bush winning in 2000 and Trump in 2016 do the EC no further credit.
Thus, it doesn’t seem that the measures you suggest will take us back to some ideal situation. Even worse, your proposals are things that no one cares about, concerning an institution that no one likes. It’s like proposing to take out the carburetor out of a Ford Pinto and put in a fuel injector, when one could buy a new F150.
I don’t buy it. The SC has fucked up voting rights and election finance legislation, and new legislation probably can’t fix those issues. Maybe you are correct on abortion. We need to be able to nip jackassery like Dobbs in the bud.
So I ask about practical, implementable solutions, and you say “eliminate the Senate”. I think that’s much better suited to the other thread about overhauling the government.
As for the rest, “What’chu talkin’ bout, Willis?”
The Senate is undemocratic? Senators are elected by their constituents. Ok, they are numerated on a balance of State power, not by pure population, but that’s not undemocratic.
And the Senate is only good for keeping anything from getting done? That totally depends on the people in office and the Party in charge. Right now, it’s the House that is completely inoperable and obstructing legislation like the bipartisan border bill. Whereas the Senate having a Dem tiebreaker under a Dem President is what had allowed Biden to achieve his agenda at all.
If your complaint is about the filibuster, it would be much simpler to modify or even eliminate that one process that pass a Constitutional Amendment.
And it’s not just the equal state representation thing that is in the Constitution. The Senate oversees Executive appontments and is part of the Impeachment process for removing bad officials. The fact that naked partisanship has corrupted and prevented that function from working does not make the intent bad, it’s an outcome of the failure in the whole system right now. We need better safeguards to protect against the people with no integrity or ethics getting the levers of power.
There’s also some benefit to having a second house of Congress to provide a check to one party running roughshod over the country. Yes, it’s not an ideal check because both houses could be in the same majority, but it’s a part of what we’ve got.
While I agree with the sentiment, that’s another item better suited to the other thread. Repealing one of the Bill of Rights is not practical.
Again, that’s for the other thread. This thread is for implementable fixes, not a wish list for complete government overhaul.
What’s the current process for admitting new States, and how does this proposed method improve how our country is running?
Okay, reduce the state power function and increase the representation balance.
While that sounds good, because of the difference in jurisdiction, citing the FDA doesn’t seem fair. Elections are inherently political in a way food and drug regulation is not.
This is a solid recommendation. This is a way to break the two party system. Proportional representation means smaller parties like the Libertarians or Green party can gain a seat at the table, and this have an effective voice. Instead of just playing spoiler to one or the other main party.
To be clear, you are saying ballot access remains fairly open to allow lots of candidates, which means lots of options for smaller parties aligning with better defined philosophies. Each position in the ballot is voted on statewide. There are no election districts, every position is at- large?
Hmm. No districts would tend to favor one stronger party without proportional representation. There has to be some mechanism to keep a state with a slight majority of one party from getting the most votes statewide in every seat. Without such a mechanism, you haven’t eliminated gerrymandering, you have gerrymandered the whole state.
Or do you mean one vote allowed for all the seats collectively?
I don’t get the love for the EC even as just a tallying mechanism. Doesn’t that still mean some states are more important than others based on population size? Are EC votes proportional, or winner take all by state?
Now this is a great suggestion. Sets min and max ages and some qualification for experience.
This undercuts checks and balances. No veto. Legislative control already resides in Congress.
There have been oodles of suggestions about changes to state boundaries. This just nominates a mechanism which is equivalent to the admission of a new state
Which is precisely why the administration of elections needs to be non-partisan.
If you don’t nail that fundamental down the rest is just dross.
The FDA is non-commercial too, yet its determinations have a significant commercial effect.
I disagree, you are still thinking of the implications from winner-takes-all perspective but the USEC platform is the use of proportional representation
Could be either each voter casts one vote and the say 25 state representatives are allocated based on their proportion of the state primary vote or each voter casts a separate vote for each of their 25 state representatives. I prefer the former but the latter works.
The only disproportion is that each state gets 1 Senate vote. All other representation (and hence the vast majority of EC votes) is proportional to population. USEC platform is the use of proportional representation, with neither first-past-the-post or winner-takes-all.