The easiest of all is to revise the rules for the House and Senate. Restore the voice vote, add some secret votes, restore the Office of Technology Assessment, etc. There are probably quite a few things that they could do, gratis, that would make their own lives better and make the country better as well.
If we can’t do away with the Electoral College, my first priority would be expanding and restructuring the House to more accurately reflect states’ populations. If one “Wyoming” equaled one House seat, California would have 67 House representatives and 69 electoral votes.
This would mean better representation all the time, of course, in addition to making the EC more fair.
Apart from the subsequent clause, which specifies the initial apportionment of representation, there is nothing in there that would prevent Congress from redefining the way districting is done.
I would be in favor of a law that would require every state to have at least 3 districts, every district to cross at least two state lines and each district providing representatives from the candidates who receive more than 28% of the whole vote-for-one tally.
There would be far fewer districts – probably around 80, for up to 240 total CongressCritters – because more voices means the individuals have to shout louder to be heard. Additionally, I would add that a person who receives more than 50% of the vote tally shall have a doubled vote, but also that any person who receives more than 40% shall be enjoined from candidacy in any district in the subsequent election (but could run again after that).
Such a voting scheme would give rise to conundra for voters, encouraging them to vote for alternative candidates if they worry that too much support could be a problem for the person they like (and enough other people are going to vote for that person anyway).
Elections do not have to be blind. I believe that an election should be 8 weeks long, each voter given 3 ballots which they can use to recast their vote based on changing totals. The totals are reported every Tuesday, based on the ballots that have thus far been received and counted, and voters can submit an early ballot, a revision or retraction and a final ballot. In order to eliminate strategic shennanigans, all ballots reported with two weeks remaining will be final, no retractions or revisions allowed thereafter.
My bad. I interpreted the other thread as “anything goes” and this one as “adjusting the current system without completely erasing it.”
But yes, realistically speaking, the only major change possible in the US right now is nothing at all. We’re frozen in place.
Yes, that’s a tradition of the institution, and there are a lot of others. I just don’t see the value-add of the Senate, and it would seem more practical to eliminate it than try to cure it of its bad habits.
It’s never worked. Andrew Johnson, Clinton, and Trump should all have been impeached and convicted (yeah, Clinton too, IMO), but 2/3 of the Senate has proven to be too high of a bar. And in the case of the Supreme Court, the Senate is now abusing its “advice and consent” function. Enough is enough.
The flip side is that there is usually one chamber to obstruct, and with the filibuster, the Senate can usually obstruct.
I think the governing party should be able to govern and then be rewarded or punished in elections. We’ve gotten too used as a country to nothing getting done and nothing ever changing.
To pick a nit, there have been several “Guilty” verdicts, all for judges, none of them for President or Supreme Court Justice.
I will agree with you that the 2/3 level is too high especially in the current hyper-contentious two-party climate. Remember when the Constitution was being written, there were more than two political parties, and there was a lot of disdain for political parties in general. They believed that as individuals, they would vote for proper, not for party. That being said, I would not be against lowering that threshold to 60%; any lower and you risk the hyper-partisan split being able to kick out a president just because they don’t like them.
BTW - I disagree about Clinton. He never should have been impeached to begin with. Yes, he lied about “have(ing) sex with that woman”, but is that worth kicking him out of office? Trump impeachment #1, on the other hand, was him blackmailing Ukraine to get dirt on Biden. Johnson, per Wikipedia was impeached for firing his Secretary of War, which Congress passed an unconstitutional (IMHO - oh, and also in the not-so-humble opinion of the Supreme Court) bill to forbid. Definitely a political act, not a “this guy is a crook” thing. Did he violate the Tenure of Office act? Yes. Was that reason to kick him out? Not if the act was unconstitutional.
Yes, I should have said that it has never worked in major cases. However, it’s not even used in minor ones now. Shouldn’t we have impeached just a few more people in the past 200 years?
Yes, it’s a bit damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Clinton’s conduct was horrible, and he really should have resigned over it. Democrats circled the wagons, showing Republicans how it’s done for later reference. OTOH, I don’t think it was wise for the Republicans to impeach him over it. But once they did, I think it would have been fair to boot Clinton out. (I was not very political at the time but leaned right, and I despised Clinton. His smug fucking mug is basically what delayed my becoming a liberal until fucking idiot Dubya arrived on the scene.)
Trump is an unambiguous “throw him out” for both impeachments.
Andrew Johnson is regularly cited as a top 5 worst president, so I think trying to impeach him in this case was like trying Al Capone on tax evasion: just get him on something and get rid of him. Since impeachment is political and not a matter of pure justice under the law, I don’t have much of an issue with it, so long as the person is in general deserving of being booted.
Damnit, you keep making me …
Um, actually, the most recent guilty verdict was 2010, so not that long ago.
Although I agree that we probably could/should have had more impeachments. I’m looking forward to Eileen Cannon doing something stupid enough to get impeached for.
Forward?! That sucker is teed up!
Then please tell us your thoughts on those methods.
Great!
Appreciate the sentiment. I’m sure the first part will be via your restaffed SC?
You mean eliminate States’ role in federal elections, or as entities at all? The latter is a massive restructure of the government, not a practical fix. If the former, I can see wanting to make federal elections a federal process. Same laws nationwide, process by a nonpartisan organization. How to ensure nonpartisan would likely involve similar checks and balances like each party shows allowed observers to counting, etc.
In theory it seems so easy to eliminate gerrymandering. In practice, carving up election precincts is complex and offers lots of room for interpretation. But taking power away from whichever party controls the election board after the census would be a huge step.
The issue since Dobbs is that the people who like the outcome have enough power to obstruct any legislation. We will see if that changes next year.
I agree, I’m just pointing out saying “make it like the FDA” misses that the FDA is not about politics. But since means of removing partisanship is a necessity.
Nominally a great idea, but not everybody gets holidays off. I prefer mandatory leave access and alternatives like early voting to allow flexibility for the voter.
These are great. Is secret vote really what we want? The whole point of recording votes is so the voters can see if their surrogates are representing them in the manner they wish. Private votes reduce power of the people to oversee things.
I do like having a nonpartisan science and technology office to advise the government, instead of relying on private think tanks with their own agendas.
What does it mean when the people oversee things?
Let’s clump types of people, for purposes of illustration, even though it’s a given that the world will be more complicated.
We’ll say that there’s the “average voter”. This is a person who largely doesn’t know much about anything, votes party-line, doesn’t really know why anyone does anything, and accepts things at face value. This is where we end up with cases like, politician X saying, “We need a wall to keep THEM out.” And then, you watch the head of DHS and ICE tell congress that a wall would be a largely ineffective use of money if the top interest is to prevent illegal immigration, and divert the resources away from more useful measures. Somehow, that information never makes its way back to these voters and, should the wall not be built then, clearly, the issue is corruption, conspiracies to bring in illegals to vote, etc. If my politician doesn’t vote “Wall” then clearly we need to get rid of him.
Let’s also say that there’s the influential voter called the PAC Holder. This is a person who spends millions for candidate X, with the expectation that they will return the favor when they get into office. So, for example, the PAC Holder might own a business making Electric Vehicles and spend big for candidate X. Once the candidate takes office, the PAC holder can now watch the votes that the office holder is making and police whether there was reciprocity. Any failure to vote in a way that’s acceptable, the candidate will lose backing in the next cycle.
Let’s further suppose that the PAC Holder, through their position as an influential member of society, may also have many levers to control and influence the “average voter”, using them to punish candidate X for failed purity.
We might imagine a 3rd class of voter, the “informed, introspective, diligent, honest, and well-informed person” who can deal with complexity, tries to be update on basic macroeconomics, science, global defense postures, etc. and that he uses the vote tallies to try and determine which politicians are voting according to the best available information and which seem, instead, to be bowing to public or nefarious pressures.
But first, let’s ask what percentage of the total electorate that 3rd group really is? Let’s also ask what he’s to do when there’s no strong signal that there’s a notable group of candidates worth backing.
In general, most of us aren’t capable of providing any useful input into policy. Trying to do so is more harmful than good. And with that being so, public voting is just a mechanism for vote influencing from interested parties.
The idea of representative government is that you find a person that you trust and empower them to make decisions. If you don’t trust them, you shouldn’t be voting for them. If you’re to the point that you need to police them, your system has already failed. The correct system is to ensure that there’s no advantage to corrupt types to seek office and no way for nefarious or unintentially nefarious people to interfere.
If you do things like provide government funding for candidates, set up tight schedules for elections, and force the voters to look at the person as a person rather than as a bundle of platform positions - because there’s no way to know what they’ll actually do - then you’ll get better politicians.
Do you really need to re-elect your lower house every other year? I can see it made sense in the days when landed folk would have had to be a long hard journey from one job or the other, but nowadays? They must barely have time to get their feet under the table before they’re off on the campaign trail again.
If you paired it with single term limits, I could see it making sense.
The House is meant to represent the average person, so they’re meant to have the mindset and to be able to understand how the people feel - what they need, what they don’t want, etc.
If you come in as an average person, serve 2 years, and get out then you’ll very well fit that mold. If you’re some partisan hack, that’s been showering on the party line for the last twelve years and spending 80% of your time campaigning, then you’re pretty divorced from that.
In theory the constant campaigning forces you to keep your eye on the people and what they’re asking for. My sense is that it just forces you to more strongly turn to lying about everything, and running the honest folk out of the business.
I agree with that.
These are much more solid suggestions, IMO.
One other thing about voting records. It’s harder to fake vote results if there’s a visible record kept. Isn’t that the basis of all the Republican hysteria over the various voting machines?
There’s more history for the secret vote, though. Campaigns used to pay people to vote, and they had paid enforcers that would go around to make sure that people had voted the way they’d been told to.
The secret vote was instituted and that went away.
The US was on a pure upward course from the time of the Constitution until the 70s, when we abandoned the voice vote, in Congress. Most of history was the voice vote, and that’s where you saw politicians crisis the aisle, leading the people on social issues, etc. Once they could be named and shamed, that all slowly came to a halt.
I admit that it’s not intuitive that less policing is better, but that doesn’t make it not true.
Addendum to the previous (@Irishman):
As an example, ask whether criminal trials should be fully open and reviewable to the general public? Should we have access to every person that the police gained information from, even if they aren’t called as a witness? Should the jury deliberations be public? Should we be able to pay jurors , so long as we don’t do so in coordination with the defense? Should the media be reporting on each decision by each side, like it’s a sports game? Would all of that make trials more fair or less fair, as time went on? If you’re not concerned about the lack of transparency, there, why are you for elections? I’d say that it’s because you can look at the criminal trial system and see how everything is organized and see how it’s built to create fairness and a lack of motive for misbehavior. You don’t see that for elections and, for reasons of wanting to feel like they’re “representing me”, we’ve chosen “me” (our personal, individual interests) as the guiding beacon and tried to use policing, influence, and pressure rather than using the more obvious techniques that would simply make everything fair.
Lady Justice is blind for a reason. That reason doesn’t go away when it comes up governance and we’re lying to ourselves when we say otherwise.
Without changing the constitution, Congress could put control of federal elections and get every eligible voter registered and set up enough voting places to avoid long lines. A good friend of mine claimed that the 2000 election was stolen in Ohio where the state took a whole load of voting machines out of Cleveland (where he was living) and moved them to rural counties where they weren’t needed and that people in black neighborhoods were waiting in line till midnight to vote–unless they gave. And if convicted felons can run for president, I see no reason they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. This could all be done by act of congress. Needless to say, gerrymandering would be banned.
Another reform would be to take appellate duties out of the supreme court and put them into a “Superior Court of Appeals” whose membership would be, on a rotating basis, chosen from the highest district courts. And declaring an act of congress unconstitutional would a very large majority of those judges.
I don’t have a very high opinion of the founding fathers. From what I see, they were young aristocrats who wanted an aristocratic democratic system. As a result we’ve had to spend the last 240 years fixing the damage they did to make the democratic system more just and equitable.
For example when US democracy first started off it had the following aristocratic traits:
Primary candidates were appointed, not directly elected
Senators were appointed, not directly elected.
You had to be a land owning, tax paying, white male age 21+. As a result barely 5% of people were eligible to vote. That number is now about 60% who are eligible to vote since now you just need to be 18+, mentally competent, and not in the criminal justice system (the definition of this varies).
The house and senate both had filibusters. The house got rid of their filibuster, the senate kept theirs.
The senate acted as a brake to stop legislation coming from the house
The electoral college was created to placate slave states
The senate rewards small rural states more than large, urban states
This wasn’t the founding fathers fault, but the house was capped at 435 in the 1920s.
We have a first past the post election system
The end result is a very aristocratic, dysfunctional democracy that is inferior to many other systems.
What can be done to keep up the improvements we’ve been implementing over the last 240 years to fix the damage?
Some improvements are realistic, some are not realistic
Realistic improvements:
Ranked choice voting on a state level by ballot initiative, hopefully someday followed by RCV on a national level
Lowering the voting age to 16
Allowing people in the criminal justice system to vote. In some states being convicted of a felony means you lose the right to vote for life. In some states you can vote even from prison. In some states you can’t vote until you’re done with probation or parole. But there can be improvements. Florida recently had a ballot initiative to give felons the right to vote.
Automatic registration of all voters when they fill out government or commercial documents
Mail in ballots for everyone with ballots along with the candidates stances provided in the packet.
Making election day a holiday (even with mail in ballots, hopefully it would give people a day to focus on the election). This would apply to both primaries and general elections on the state, local and federal level.
Empower small donors with either tax credits up to a small amount ($500-1000) for donating to politicians/parties, or use a matching fund system where every $1 you privately donate to politicians/parties is matched by $2-6 in public funds, up to maybe a max of $1000 per person in matching funds.
Make the filibuster harder to use. Still keep it, but require people to actually stand in the senate for hours on end. Then do a second round of voting with fewer senators and another filibuster. Keep doing that until you get down to maybe 50 or 52 senators then try to do a vote. This would have benefits and drawbacks for both parties.
Abolish gerrymandering and have impartial groups draw up districts.
More legal and financial oversight of courts with enforceable discipline, especially the federal courts.
Unrealistic improvements:
Don’t some systems have a system where the executive is picked by the legislature? I thought that was how the UKs system worked. I don’t know if that is superior or not.
Proportional representation. I don’t know if that would work with our system.
On the federal level, instead of having the executive office holder pick judicial nominees, have a group of legal experts pick a group of 5 nominees, and then the executive can pick from that batch to have the legislative branch vote on. Some states do this when appointing state level judges.
Federal ballot initiatives. If a majority in a federal election vote for a ballot saying they universal health care, we get universal health care.
To clarify, are you looking for a debate on whether or not the things you listed were screw-ups at the time, in the eighteenth century?
~Max
I don’t feel thats a debate, if other people want to debate that that is fine. But the founding fathers were mostly young men, aristocratic, racist, sexist, and had no real knowledge of political science because the field didn’t really exist back then. As a result we’ve had to spend the last 240 years fixing the damage they caused in the US.