Least Controversial Amendment
Resolved by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States (Two-thirds of both houses concurring therein) to have the following become an amendment to the Constitution when ratified by 3/4ths of the States.
Section 1
All legislative chambers except for the Senate, shall only be considered to have passed a bill when the requisite majority as their current or future rules would have it, but under this amendment, that of their full membership shall have certified their support of the bill. Furthermore, this certification may be in the form of a faxed signature on an identical copy of the bill given while not present in the chamber, or in a similar secure fashion as technological advance permits. Furthermore, no one except for the clerk of that chamber shall be required to be present in order for business to proceed as usual provided that members communicate with each other with reasonably secure technology. No part of Section 1 applies to the Senate.
Section 2
After a law shall be passed nationalizing voter registration and eligibility, the following six sections shall come into force:
Section 3
The Senate shall maintain its current rules and shall have the sole power to regulate foreign policy and the membership of the executive branch and judicial appointments co-equally with the President. Each Senator shall have the same pay as the highest paid legislator of the national government. The Senate shall no longer be involved in the legislative process except for their passage of treaties and constitutional amendments, but will remain involved in passing or rejecting other laws for two years after the House of Proportions convenes. The Senate shall maintain the sole power to try all impeachments.
Section 4
The House of Representatives is dissolved, and in its place are the following three chambers, each with 145 members elected to three year terms staggered such that one chamber is up for reelection in its entirety each year.
The House of Proportions represents the general ratio of partisan divisions among the American people, with each party that would have at least ten percent support of the people in its election holding seats. All ballots shall use open ticket proportional voting with each party feilding 145 candidates and petitioning their inclusion with 1,000,000 citizens cosigned. Each voter shall be able to vote for one of those candidates in order to make that candidate more likely to win a seat as well as to possibly increase the number of seats that party gets.
The House of Latitude has 29 districts contained between the northernmost latitude on which there may be found territory of the United States, the southernmost latitude on which there may be found territory of the United States, the eastmost longitude on which there may be found territory of the United States, and the westmost longitude on which the may be territory of the United States and subdivided to equalize the number of citizens reported in each district. Each district shall have at least ten candidates run, followed by a referendum on how to discriminate the candidates running by which party, using the labels from the House of Proportions, each candidate belongs to followed by an open ticket proportional election one month later. The referendum shall have a vertical list of the candidates with each name preceded by, “To which party does” and followed by “belong? [most popular party label in House of Proportions election], [second most popular party label], [third most popular party label], [fourth most popular party label], other,” on one line for each. To indicate the choice, one voter should be able to touch, mark or puncture the word of the label itself depending on the balloting system.
The House of Longitude has 29 districts encompassing the whole territory of the United States with boundaries beginning and ending on the northernmost and southernmost latitude of the House of Latitude and subdivided to equalize the number of reported citizens. The House of Longitude elections shall be governed by the same regulations as govern the House of Latitude elections.
Section 5
The passing of bills, once all three new chambers convene, shall be by any three of the following ways: All three chambers pass it by majority consent, or two chambers pass it by two-thirds majority consent, or one chamber passes a bill unanimously provided that in that one case the bill doesn’t affect any legislator.
After a bill shall have been passed, the President who shall hold office at the time of passage shall have the power to strike out provisions for spending, or taking on more debt, or to, by executive order, provide a spending or debt cap to a bill or provide a lower one if one was already included.
The President shall faithfully execute all the laws of the land.
Section 6
Reapportionment of the nonexistent House of Representatives seats shall continue in order to properly apportion electors among the states for Presidential elections.
Section 7
Each house replacing the House of Representatives may, by a majority of the whole, impeach persons recompensed within that year by the federal government to have them tried by the Senate.
Section 8
The proposal process for amendments to the Constitution is changed to having either:
The Senate passed the amendment by two-thirds majority vote and one of the other legislative chambers passed it unanimously, or the Senate passed the amendment with a three-fifths majority and two of the other chambers pass it by two-thirds vote, or the Senate passed the amendment by a majority vote and all three of the other chambers pass it by majority vote.
Two-thirds or more of the States of the Union now existing or shall exist send delegates to the same convention to all meet at once and propose by two-thirds of the states in that quorum amendments to the Constitution. Delegates may be either elected or appointed as state law directs. Each delegate who rises first to speak in any lull of the debate or to start the debate shall be able to speak twice on any legislative proposal and not be interrupted except with their consent and with all such interruptions first directed to the chair. The delegates may create rules of the convention such as to close off the convention to the public or open it to the public, to stop anyone from speaking who is not a delegate, to stop non-vocal demonstrations of whatever kind in or affecting the convention, and choose who the chair will be.
Section 9
The Presidency and Senate are hereby removed from the Supreme Court justice appointment process.
Section 10
Anyone who shall be qualified to be a defense counsel in every state as per each states’ legal requirements to serve as court appointed defense attorney for defendants who cannot afford lawyers, and shall be qualified by the legal requirements in each state to be able to financially audit public entities, may present proof of those qualifications to the clerk of the Senate and immediately thereafter be sworn in as a justice of the Supreme Court.
“Legal requirements” means that they are qualified according to legislative text written before they attempted to qualify such that there is no central authorizing committee differentiating between people who they believe might want to become justices of the Supreme Court as opposed to those who wish to become legal counsel so as to stop people they don’t like from becoming justices of the Supreme Court. There are to be no vetoes against anyone using this section, but legal requirements can entail, only changing what it entails year-to-year, solving extremely complicated problems without retries or very many retries and without help or very much help and in a limited amount of time with or without breaks.
Section 11
Using a judicial position for any other purpose than fact and law is an impeachable offense.
What will happen if this amendment is passed:
- Congress as well as state legislatures will be able to pass bills while listening to their constituents at home because bills can be passed just by faxing their signatures on a copy of a bill and having the clerk of their chamber receive enough signatures on a given bill. This will mean constituents will believe that they are being heard rather than the lobbyists and protests in capitals and a happier electorate in general.
- The Supreme Court will gradually be less of a necessary evil of the political game, and instead be independent of politics and actively avoiding political controversy so that the electorate can fix political mistakes by just electing different people into office. Furthermore, the Supreme Court will then be able to grow in size so that no member will be too powerful.
- And, once Congress finally cuts the difference between state laws on elections and nationalizes all of them:
- The House of Representatives, or, more accurately, the power of gerrymandering, will go away over the next three years as it is replaced by proportionate elections.
- There will be three chambers for normal legislation, not two, and they can compete against each other to pass bills because no one chamber can veto the process of passing a bill.
- All legislation will be, by necessity, a law that covers all Americans that Americans on a wide, cross-section of America want, for the most controversial laws (laws only a bare majority want) will now have to pass three chambers, not two, and in two of those chambers, the party in power will only have three out of five seats (as I doubt a longitude or latitude of Americans will have more than 70% of the vote for one party, the mathematical minimum threshold for 4 out of 5 seats) in each district latitudinally or longitudinally and so will have to get votes from delegations from every district, longitudinally and latitudinally, in order to pass their bill. However, bills that nearly all Americans want and/or bills that a special interest group doesn't like will be able to pass easily despite their best efforts because this amendment allows bills to pass in six other ways (let's call the chambers A, B and C): 2/3A+2/3B, 2/3A+2/3C, 2/3B+2/3C, unanimous in A, unanimous in B, and unanimous in C.
- Gerrymandering is impossible. Lines of longitude and latitude will always be straight and following the curvature of the Earth. There are infinitely many lines of longitude and latitude such that all districts will have the same number of people given that their numbers are reported.
- America will fulfill its commitment to democracy by finally giving the citizens living in U.S. territories a real say in their government.
I have done the calculation of the length of time it would take to pass the LSAT, CPA test, and Bar exam in all 50 states by someone so smart that they could follow 2 masters degrees in wildly different fields at the same time: 54 years, meaning that the average person graduating college (22 years old) and immediately seeking a place on the Supreme Court will get there when they are 76, and will be able to serve until the average lifespan of 85 is used up, or about 9 years, as compared to 30 years in the status quo.
ReplyDeleteSo for clarification, with regards to section 11, would there be no cap to the court. In other words, the Supreme Court would grow limitlessly?
DeleteIt is limited biologically, not mathematically.
DeleteCurrently, the only thing limiting the size of the Supreme Court to 9 is the political impossibility of passing a law to increase its size.
DeleteIn the case of this amendment, Congress could have the power to reduce the size of the court via economics, and maybe even require the 19th+ justice to pay for their seat on an exponential curve.
Oh that makes sense
DeleteCool.
DeleteI am prepared for objections :).
Other things that can be done include striking out the word "borrow" from Article I Section 8, clause 2 as a fail-safe balanced budget amendment with no drawbacks; striking out the 16th amendment and stating that Congress has the power to enforce one net receipts tax of (chosen time period="t") to replace all forms of taxation except duties and excises:
ReplyDeletetax/t=net_receipts/t*atan(ln(net_receipts/t)*.06)/π.
The two permissible exemptions to this tax are interest paid by government for debt held against it, and a proportionate tax reduction for exceptional risk to regaining a primary investment to the amount made with one's own funds in the pursuit of net receipts for a legitimate project done in the United States.
A "project" is something which requires capital investment for tools and for paying salaries to U.S. citizens working on the potentially profitable enterprise.