It isn’t that simple.
See John Oliver on Gerrymandering. Worth watching the whole thing, but see the part starting at 13m50s
Some oddly shaped districts are that way for a good reason.
I concur, except we disagree a little on a few small points.
And no tests, no requiring proving you are a citizen, no requiring having a certain ID that some voters have a hard time getting, etc..
Have we had a real issue with “Natural Born” yet?
Yeah, i agree- if the voters really want six term old dude, then they can have him.
More specific at least.
The immunity is only for Official acts within the purview of the office. So far, it has had no reffect.
IMHO- if the voters want a Felon, they can have a felon. Democracy.
Proportional representation. Then we have a multi-party system with no party having a majority, ever, so nothing gets done unless a multiparty coalition favors it.
Just how Israel, Italy and the UK currently works And look how well that is working today.
As opposed to how seamlessly our system has been working lately?
UK doesn’t have proportional representation. It’s first-past-the-post.
We already have people whose job it is to call elections. It no doubt varies from state to state, but usually the Sec of State or some underling thereof. However, they don’t do this until about 3 or 4 weeks after the election is over. The media call elections usually that night, but those calls have absolutely no legal status. But trying to restrict such calls will run afoul of the 1st Amendment.
I posted this suggestion in another thread, but it really goes here.
Convert the Department of Justice into a fourth branch of the government. In this DoJ, the Attorney General will not be appointed by the President, nor can the AG be removed by the President. The AG will be elected by the federal judges for a specific term with some kind of term limits. (Perhaps 3 year terms with a limit of 3 terms. Something like that.) The AG can also be impeached by Congress.
Allow the DoJ to investigate and prosecute any official in any of the other branches, including the President. The President violating a law even in an official act is not immune to prosecution.
All District Attorneys and other officials in the DoJ will be appointed by the AG, not the President. They may have to be confirmed by the Senate, as they are now.
Would the president still have the pardon power?
Which is why I warned in that same post that requiring mathematicslly objective districts coukd create representativity issues.
Eight states (plus DC) with fewer than the average number of electoral votes have signed on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If wielding disproportionate electoral influence was that important to small states, this would not have happened.
Also, we need to uncap the House – the aforementioned Wyoming Rule is a good start – and pass the Fair Representation Act to kill gerrymandering dead.
I think the most important reform is to lower the threshold for impeaching & removing a President. Currently, the Senate needs 2/3rd majority. I would lower that to 60%. To me, there needs to be a credible threat that a President could be removed in order to limit their criminality while in office.
I would put in an amendment that makes it very clear that Presidents are not immune from their criminality just because it’s “an official part of their job”. Criminal behavior should be treated as such.
Pardons should be removed from the Presidential powers entirely.
Agencies set up by Congress as “Independent” should have Presidential powers more strictly enumerated, so that a guy like Trump can’t just fire someone at will.
SCOTUS should have a justice for each district, which is currently 13. And there should be term limits for SCOTUS justices.
Finally…we should put a Woman’s Right to Choose into an Amendment. That shouldn’t be allowed to be regulated separately by state.
That’s orthogonal to my proposal about the DoJ, but I agree with the suggestion to put that power in the hands of a committee.
Then Bill Clinton would have been out.
Other way around… The vast majority are winner-take-all, and only two states assign electors to districts and the senatorial electors based on the way the statewide vote goes.
I think compelling all states to adopt and adhere to this method would largely remove most criticism of the electoral college in a practical sense.
The biggest problem we face is that Congress has been complicit in letting Trump thumb his nose at laws and Presidential norms. There somehow needs to be more enforcement and penalties for misbehaving Presidents beyond/outside of Congressional politics and impeachment.
Yes, I already admitted i accidentally got it backwards.
The voters will have a chance to fix that coming up in November. But yeah, the MAGAs are out of control.
I often wonder about the utility of universal suffrage, mostly from the perspective of how to mitigate the effects low/no information voters and the ignorant and stupid.
I mean it galls me that some chucklehead who votes for candidate A because he’s taller has the same vote as someone who carefully researches the issues and tries to come up with a well-reasoned choice for one candidate or the other. Doesn’t have anything to do with the parties; it’s the rather casual way voting seems to be approached by some that bothers me.
Don’t know how to put chlorine in the voter pool without somehow being discriminatory (or potentially so) toward some unintended group though.