How should the US Constitution be amended?

Politics & Elections
1

With an eye towards polling this fine group about how the US Constitution should be amended, I hereby throw open the floor to real, honest, legitimate suggestions. I will cull the best ones, and/or the most popular ones as deemed by me, into a poll later. What do you Dopers say? How should the United States Constitution be amended?

As for myself, I suggest the following amendments be made:

  1. Amend the Second Amendment, specifying that individuals may own firearms as they deem reasonably necessary for self-defense and sport hunting, subject to reasonable registration and regulation by the state.

  2. The President’s power to pardon shall be limited in that the President may not pardon himself, the vice-president or any member of his administration.

  3. All Presidential nominees shall be voted on by the US Senate within 60 days of nomination.

  4. The President and Vice-President are subject to all criminal laws at all levels of government, the same as every other person, and may be prosecuted during his or her term of office.

Further suggestions and/or comments?

2

[Moderating]

I’m not sure where you intended to put this, but it sure wasn’t Cafe Society. GD, perhaps?

Moving.

3

MODS: I mistakenly put this in Cafe Society. I ask that it be moved to Politics and Elections. Thank you.

4

Prosecuted by whom? To make this work, you’d have to set up an entirely new law enforcement agency, outside of the executive, just for the purpose of prosecuting the President and Vice-President. And how would the members of this agency be chosen?

5

MODS: I mistakenly put this in Cafe Society. I ask that it be moved to Politics and Elections. Thank you.

6
  1. Amend the Second Amendment to this:
  • Boston T. Party in his book Boston’s Gun Bible, Chapter 30/10
  1. Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.
7

I have a list of things that I have seen people, including myself, request as amendments, that I post on Facebook every now and then, under the title, “Proposals for the upcoming Constitutional Convention that everyone thinks we should have.”
Here is the current list:

The States may define when “life” begins (i.e. overturn Roe v. Wade).

The following shall be repealed (choose one or more):

  • The first sentence of the 14th Amendment (i.e. you are not a citizen just because you were born in the USA);
  • The 2nd Amendment;
  • The 16th Amendment (allowing for income tax);
  • The 22nd Amendment (the two-term limit on being elected President);
  • The exception for prisoners in the 13th Amendment (i.e. no more “chain gangs” or forced work by prisoners).

The living parents of someone who is a citizen are also citizens (i.e. if someone here illegally gives birth, then the mother and father become citizens automatically).

Direct popular vote of the President and Vice-President.

All (choose one: legal residents, persons in the USA) are entitled to free (choose one or both of: health care, education through undergraduate university level).

The Congress may restrict expenditures on elections for federal offices.

The Congress may restrict patent protections when it is in the public interest (i.e. allowing for generic drugs after a brief period).

The Congress and each State may set restrictions on how many terms or years a person may be a Representative or Senator from that State.

The burning or other desecration of the flag of the United States is not protected under the 1st Amendment.

The District of Columbia shall be entitled to one Representative and two Senators, and each Territory whose citizens pay income tax to the United States shall be entitled to one Representative and one Senator; however, the Territories shall not be entitled to Presidential electors.

Marriage shall be (choose one):

  • limtied to one man and one woman;
  • allowed between any two consenting persons of legal age (optionally add: except that the Congress may restrict marriages based on blood relationships).

Persons who are neither citizens nor legal residents of the United States shall not be counted for purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives.

The membership of the House of Representatives shall be determined by a nationwide vote of the people casting votes for political parties, with each party receiving seats based on the number of votes received; the Congress shall decide how to distribute the seats among the States, and each State shall decide who its Representatives will be, in line with the results of the vote (this should get rid of gerrymandering).

In states where members of the House of Representatives are elected by district, each state shall assign an independent commission to draw said districts.

The right of the President of the United States to grant reprieves and pardons shall not apply to the President granting a self-reprieve or self-pardon.

No person shall be eligible for the office of President or Vice-President of the United States who was not eligible to be elected President at the start of the term in which that person would hold office (i.e. close the “The 22nd Amendment only mentions who can be elected President” loophole).

The right to “free exercise of religion” does not prohibit Congress from taxing churches or other religious organizations, or from setting conditions pertaining to which churches shall be taxed, and the rate of tax for each.

8

Why? The only effect I can see this having is to remove the requirement that Senators be directly elected by the people.

If you are trying to get rid of the requirement that states can have different numbers of Senators, you might want to read the last sentence of Article V: “No state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” Then again, whether Article V itself can be amended to get rid of this clause is another story.

9

The purpose of which, of course, is to make the Senate immune from gerrymandering.

10

It’s a right-wing thing. There are a fair number of Republicans who don’t, in fact, want senators to be directly elected by the people, although I’m not sure the idea is quite as popular now that Democrats have woken up to the fact that state legislatures are actually important, and have started flipping seats and chambers.

11

Abolish the Electoral College. The President and Vice President should be chosen by direct vote.

The Electoral College was a compromise between those who wanted Congress to chose the President and those who wanted a direct election. The former thought the general population was too uninformed to make good choices for high office, so that duty should only be entrusted to those knowledgeable enough to do so. Well, nice idea, but with states passing laws that electors have to vote for the winner of the state’s general election, and the Supreme Court apparently poised to uphold those laws, what is the freaking point of the EC now? By amplifying the voting power of states with small populations, it means votes of people in places like Wyoming count for more than votes from people in New York or California, which is fundamentally unfair. And it failed utterly in 2016 to protect us from our bad choices, possibly the first time it was ever needed to function in this capacity. It’s a failed experiment. Get rid of it.

12

I nominate the following:

1- The right to own firearms does not apply to individuals, only to members of each state’s National Guard. States have the right to regulate or prohibit the sale and/or possession of any weapons.

2- A woman may terminate her pregnancy for any or no reason up until and including the sixth month of pregnancy.

3- Any consenting adult person may be married to another consenting adult person regardless of gender, excepting when the parties are of opposite genders and are related closer than second cousins.

4- Any person running for president shall have had at least ten years of combined experience as a US Senator or Representative or as a state Governor.

5- Any person running for president or for any US Representative or Senator shall make public all federal, state, and local tax returns for the preceding ten years.

6- All elections shall use paper ballots and these ballots shall be stored permanently in the National Archives.

7- If Congress passes and the president signs appropriations in excess of revenue, that added debt is automatically added to the national debt and no raising of the debt ceiling is necessary.

8- The least populous state shall have one Representative in Congress. The larger states shall have a number or Representatives equal to its population divided by the population of the least populous state, rounded to the nearest integer.

  1. Each state shall select electors for president and vice president equal to the number of its Representatives in Congress, not counting Senators.

10- Members of the Supreme Court shall be nine in number and limited in service to eighteen years. These terms shall be staggered so that one Justice’s term will expire every two years.

11- No member of the Executive branch shall be permitted to refuse to give testimony and/or evidence when subpoenaed by Congress.

12- No elected official of the United States shall be immune to prosecution and conviction by the federal government or by any State.

13- No elected official of the United States shall be eligible for a presidential pardon.

13

And with that, you’ve retroactively disqualified Barack Obama, as well as Carter, Eisenhower, and Lincoln.

The rest of your proposals strike me as far too narrow in scope and pre-supposing the existence of bodies the Constitution doesn’t provide for (there’s nothing in the Constitution establishing a National Archives, for example, nor ballots, nor tax returns, nor “members of the Executive Branch” other than the president and VP).

14

And Jefferson, and John Q Adams, and Andrew Jackson, Grant and both Roosevelts.

15

And Nixon, and Reagan, and both Bushes.

16

For that matter, I’m pretty sure the only presidents who would’ve qualified since 1900 under that criteria are McKinley, Truman, LBJ, and Clinton.

It would’ve also disqualified Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, but at least Walter Mondale would still have been in it.

17

I’m not crazy about disqualifying Grover Cleveland the first time he got elected president, but disqualifying him the second time around just seems weird.

18

Fortunately, Benjamin Harrison wouldn’t have been eligible to run against him in the first place.

19

None of the people mentioned would have been disqualified under a “ten years’ experience” clause - just delayed. They were all competent and focused enough to have just fulfilled the requirement first, *then *run for President. No biggie.

20

Why limit who people are allowed to choose as President?

If you want to just eliminate Donald Trump, well, the popular vote amendment does that.