What US constitutional amendments would you propose?

[Terralthra]

I'm not so sure a proportional system is really the best approach. The whole idea of having districts is to account for proportional representation, after all. At least IRV, et al. allow for systems which do not immensively favor a two-party system.

[TimothyC]

Repeal of Reynolds v. Sims

Why ?

Because it turns state senates into mini-state houses of representatives, as well as disenfranchising large swaths of rural voters.

Congress may not pass a law that does not apply equally to all.

Is this aimed at affirmative action? Because if it's not, I have no idea to what laws you refer.

It's so anything congress does is would also apply to congress and all of their aides.

The main problem I have with the ERA is that like Ainsely here, I think it's redundant:

[Borgholio]

Requiring 1/3 of the seats in Congress to be reserved for third party candidates. Should cut down on the ability of any one party to get their way through sheer bullying, or the kind of hostage-taking bullshit going on right now.

Why not just switch to some form of proportional representation ?

It's simpler for everyone to understand and it boosts the viability of minor parties while still allowing a majority if that is what the nation votes for.

Plus you don't have to worry about people who say they aren't a member of party x, but then acting exactly like they were.

Proportional representation won't work if it's taken literally. In the latest CA election for state senator, there were seven republicans who had more votes than the highest-ranking third party. So the end result would still be all of CA's Senators representing the two big parties. Nothing would really be fixed.

Edit - oh and I would support an amendment that prevents riders from being attached to bills that are unrelated, such as a previous poster mentioned with an abortion rider attached to a finance bill.

[General Zod]

I'm not so sure a proportional system is really the best approach. The whole idea of having districts is to account for proportional representation, after all. At least IRV, et al. allow for systems which do not immensively favor a two-party system.

Would it be any worse than the sheer amount of gerrymandering that goes on with the district system already?

[ZOmegaZ]

IRV's slightly better than plurality. (What's not?) But it's still got problems. I'm a bigger fan of approval voting, which is trivial to implement, easier to explain, and in simulations has vastly better results. It also has the advantage of breaking, not just the two-party system, but the entire concept of political parties as we understand them. If you can vote for two or six or twenty candidates equally, why bother having a primary?

As far as gerrymandering goes, that's a whole different ballgame. The most reasonable thing to do is get rid of geographic districts entirely, because that's just one more thing to abuse. And it makes no sense for a political group to have more influence just because it's geographically concentrated, when a second group could have twice as many people and get no voice at all just because they're spread out. It makes sense if geography is the dominant factor in your political concerns, but that hasn't been the case for decades. (If it was, gerrymandering wouldn't be a thing!)

You could use approval voting/proportional representation, but at first glance you'd have to vote for the party, not for the individuals...

[Gandalf]

I'd put a glossary on the thing so people can know what is meant by certain words.

For example: "aid and comfort to the enemy" sounds good, but what was meant by those individual words?

[Knife]

Federal elections shall be funded by federal funds, each candidate will be allotted X amount of money/air time/advertizing by public funds to Y months prior to election to espouse their positions prior to election.

[Borgholio]

Federal elections shall be funded by federal funds, each candidate will be allotted X amount of money/air time/advertizing by public funds to Y months prior to election to espouse their positions prior to election.

Don't they do something like that in Europe, so all candidates have the opportunity to speak equally regardless of campaign funds?

[Thanas]

Yes, everybody in Germany who manages to get a certain amount of votes gets funding for the next election cycle, as well as 0.70€ per annum for every vote they got (0.85% for the first 4 million votes). It is not a perfect system as some jokers decide to get easy beer money by founding a new party just for the purpose of skimming those funds, but it ensures each candidate can do his or her job.

[Borgholio]

This might be a discussion for another thread, but assuming the power of the two-party system was magically broken one day, and many of the 3rd parties in the US were suddenly viable...I wonder which one would find itself favored by the widest percentage of the population? I know some GOPers would flock to the even harder-line conservative parties, and likewise for the Democrats and the socialist / communist parties. I'd like to see the Green Party gain some clout...

[Mr Bean]

This might be a discussion for another thread, but assuming the power of the two-party system was magically broken one day, and many of the 3rd parties in the US were suddenly viable...I wonder which one would find itself favored by the widest percentage of the population? I know some GOPers would flock to the even harder-line conservative parties, and likewise for the Democrats and the socialist / communist parties. I'd like to see the Green Party gain some clout...

The Republican party is three parties joined by common interests as has been noted several times. The Libertarians, the Fundamentalists and the Conservatives. Each of those groups can be broken in half again but should stick together under some multiparty system. The Democratic party itself is five parties so I predict about seven to twelve parties when the dust settles.

[ChaserGrey]

- Term limits for the House and the Senate. Just to pull a number I'd say five for Reps and three for Senators.

- Public funding for elections with a prohibition on outside money being spent.

- Keep the Electoral College or something like it, but assign electoral votes in proportion to how the state voted rather than winner-take-all.

- Repeal Kelo v New London. Land taken by eminent domain must be for public use and may not be sold, given, or rented to a private entity for <x> years after the taking. X should be at least 15 but no more than 30 to avoid hamstringing urban planning.

No anti-gerrymandering provisions because I don't know how to write one that can't be circumvented.

[Borgholio]

No anti-gerrymandering provisions because I don't know how to write one that can't be circumvented.

Have districts be drawn up geometrically based on dividing the state evenly into square districts of an equal size?

[Edi]

Shortest split-line algorithm or whatever it was called that results inb districts of equal population sizes.

[Simon_Jester]

- Term limits for the House and the Senate. Just to pull a number I'd say five for Reps and three for Senators.

At the moment, the most actively troublesome people in the House are people who came in in the last one or two election cycles. I'd prefer long-service congressmen; they have enough perspective to know when it's a bad idea to start breaking things.

No anti-gerrymandering provisions because I don't know how to write one that can't be circumvented.

Set a mandatory maximum on the district's ratio of perimeter to area. Circular and rectangular shapes are favored, long thin shapes are not.

Boundaries drawn along existing natural boundaries (a ridgeline or river) or political divisions are favored- come up with a conversion algorithm to "smooth" them. Other boundaries must proceed in a straight line between two defined endpoints, both of which lie on an existing natural boundary or political division.

[Civil War Man]

Once some of the other suggestions in this thread are implemented (especially getting rid of first-past-the-post voting and adding anti-gerrymandering provisions), I'd make election days national holidays so people don't have to choose between voting and keeping their jobs, and probably another one which automatically triggers nation-wide recall elections for representatives and senators if congress goes too long without passing a budget.

[Formless]

- Term limits for the House and the Senate. Just to pull a number I'd say five for Reps and three for Senators.

At the moment, the most actively troublesome people in the House are people who came in in the last one or two election cycles. I'd prefer long-service congressmen; they have enough perspective to know when it's a bad idea to start breaking things.

As long as we're talking about ways to reign in the legislature, here's one someone I know IRL came up with. If a law is found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, those legislators who voted for it get a strike on their record. If, in the unlikely scenario that they get three strikes (laws aren't found unconstitutional very often), they are barred from running for another term in the next election even if the constitution is amended. The idea being that those legislators have shown either ignorance of the constitution or hostility towards it, and changing the constitution doesn't make their attitudes appropriate in hindsight. At least, that was my associate's opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

There are several voting systems that you could implement that are better than the one we have. A number of cardinal voting systems like approval voting for instance, plural voting (as long as everyone gets the same number of votes why not give everyone five votes? Simple enough change, and quite fair. ), and my favorite, the random ballot. Rid the country of all forms of tactical voting AND deal with the issue of low voter turnout using statistical tools to find a representative sample of voter opinions. What's not to love?

But whichever you go with, the Electoral College must go. Its whole purpose was to distance the election results from the unwashed masses, so I loathe to keep it around.

[Covenant]

Shortest split-line algorithm or whatever it was called that results inb districts of equal population sizes.

Yeah. Populations are divided up into districting ratios using the shortest possible divisions, allowing for groups of people to be divided not by area, nor by voting, but by a mathematical distribution of population. It is fair and non-partisan, and while it ignores certain geographical features that some people think may be important to defining the voting culture of an area, it makes much more sense, and can be combined with a better form of representation than "first past the post" to make for a really good kind of abstracted representation.

Obviously, this same map can be used for state politics as well, allowing state representation internally and representation of the state's people nationally to represent the actual people of that state.

Let's use my home state as an example. Here are Illinois' districts as they are now:
http://rangevoting.org/IL_CDloc.pdf

Long live the Gerrymander! As you'll note, District 17 sprawls up towards Chicago along the left side of Illinois, goes down past the rump, jabs in rightwards and SPLITS into two little spiderlegs that split 18 and 19. Those aren't independent districts, those are all Dist 17. Seriously though, fuck Southern Illinois, you're basically a different state anyway *I'm a smarmy asshole*? What's down there anyway? The state Capitol? Sandwich? Plano? Whatever. Chicago's the only thing that matters.

So let's also look at Chicago's map. Chicago is that glob up along the lakefront, so it has a lot of districts in very little space. Here's how it is drawn:
http://rangevoting.org/ChicagoCloseup.gif

Once again, district 1 and district 4 make no freaking sense. It's not like Illinois would go red, but the state would be redder if the downstate people (and some of those red slobs up in the local suburbs, like where I was) had a better form of representation. So here's the split-line of Illinois:
http://rangevoting.org/Illinois.png

Not only is this more fair, it's less ridiculous looking. People like TimothyC who really hate the way that big cities dominate politics, may not be thrilled to bits by this, but it is still a fairer way of dividing votes up along individual voters (since people matter more than acerage) and insures that rural voters get an equal vote per person to a big city, and cannot be gerrymandered into inconsequential nothingness.

Mind you, Reynolds v Sims was not a power-grab by cities. Cities were drastically underrepresented. One nice number from the wiki entry says "Los Angeles County, California, then with 6 million people, had one member in the California State Senate, as did the 14,000 people of one rural county (428 times more)." But that's kinda a separate issue, as it gets into the issue of constitutionality that arises from such questions as "If one person equals one vote, and peoples mean more than map lines or district lines, then why is it fair that each state gets 2 Sentators no mater what the size?"

We can probably say that would be a good area for discussion. It might not be the best way.

But in any case, removing the blatant gerrymandering for a system that gives populations (the people who vote) a greater voice in the results of their vote is a better system than one that does not. Because this is most "fair" of the systems it is certainly one of the better ones to work with.

[ChaserGrey]

Hm. Putting an algorithm into the Constitution seems a little strange. But maybe it shouldn't be.

But that's kinda a separate issue, as it gets into the issue of constitutionality that arises from such questions as "If one person equals one vote, and peoples mean more than map lines or district lines, then why is it fair that each state gets 2 Sentators no mater what the size?"

I can kinda speak to that one. I grew up in Connecticut (tiny state in the northeast for you non-Americans), and our Senators were about the only way to get the Federal government to address our issues at all. If the EPA was slacking off on inspecting a site, or we wanted Federal aid to help decommission a reactor so we didn't nuke Long Island sound, or otherwise wanted anyone in Washington to pay any attention to our state, the Senators were pretty much the only way to get it done. We had 6 Representatives out of 435, down to 5 now, which meant our House members could usually get jack and squat attention from anybody. I think the Senate does have a purpose in making sure small states can't be completely ignored.

And yes, if you were starting with a clean sheet of paper the solution would be to redraw state lines so there are no small states, but unless you amend the Constitution to allow the Federal government to redraw state lines without their consent that's not happening. And I don't see that amendment ever passing.

[TheHammer]

As others have proposed, term limits on congressional seats - to make it more about doing something worthwhile in washington, rather than the idea of simply getting re-elected over and over.

Limits on political funding that no individual or corporation can donate more than the federal poverty line for any candidate.

Voting requirements (including voter ID) set at the Federal level to ensure a fair playing field across the nation.

[bilateralrope]

Requiring 1/3 of the seats in Congress to be reserved for third party candidates. Should cut down on the ability of any one party to get their way through sheer bullying, or the kind of hostage-taking bullshit going on right now.

Why not just switch to some form of proportional representation ?

It's simpler for everyone to understand and it boosts the viability of minor parties while still allowing a majority if that is what the nation votes for.

Plus you don't have to worry about people who say they aren't a member of party x, but then acting exactly like they were.

Proportional representation won't work if it's taken literally. In the latest CA election for state senator, there were seven republicans who had more votes than the highest-ranking third party. So the end result would still be all of CA's Senators representing the two big parties. Nothing would really be fixed.

In that case, why should the voters be ignored just to bring a third party candidate in ?

Also consider that proportional representation would be across the entire nation, not any one state. The third party probably won't get a seat from any states, but they will still get a significant voice in the senate.

[Covenant]

Hm. Putting an algorithm into the Constitution seems a little strange. But maybe it shouldn't be.

It would be pretty odd to look at, but if we were re-writing the constitution now we would probably use clearer language that is less likely to be re-interpreted in a strange way.

If the EPA was slacking off on inspecting a site, or we wanted Federal aid to help decommission a reactor so we didn't nuke Long Island sound, or otherwise wanted anyone in Washington to pay any attention to our state, the Senators were pretty much the only way to get it done. We had 6 Representatives out of 435, down to 5 now, which meant our House members could usually get jack and squat attention from anybody. I think the Senate does have a purpose in making sure small states can't be completely ignored.

Yeah, the senate is a counterpoint to the direct representation provided by the House, in many ways. Little states don't get a big vote when it comes to popular election issues, but when it comes to a battle of ideas and governance then they get a seat at the table just like any other. If we assume that states are a legitimate division (may not be, but hey, they're here) then this is a way for them to get their voice into the national dialogue.

Like you said, if we were going to redo the whole thing we might not have states or we might do the states using a similar way to the way districts are drawn. But we don't need every form of governance to be done by strict population, we've already got a House and a popularly elected President.

[Rogue 9]

Congress may not pass a law that does not apply equally to all.

Is this aimed at affirmative action? Because if it's not, I have no idea to what laws you refer.

Over the past week or so someone started a bullshit hysterical chain e-mail/tweet/Facebook post that claims that Congress exempted itself from the ACA and advocating for a 28th amendment that says that Congress shall make no law affecting the people of the United States that does not apply equally to Congress. It got to the point where I actually saw nutbars screeching that this actually was the 28th amendment already and that Congress was breaking it.

[Terralthra]

IRV's slightly better than plurality. (What's not?) But it's still got problems. I'm a bigger fan of approval voting, which is trivial to implement, easier to explain, and in simulations has vastly better results. It also has the advantage of breaking, not just the two-party system, but the entire concept of political parties as we understand them. If you can vote for two or six or twenty candidates equally, why bother having a primary?

I disagree on approval voting, strongly. It does better in simulations, as long as we assume that everyone has dichotomous preferences: Person X approves of these candidates, and does not approve of those. As soon as any significant portion of the electorate has more then "yes/no" opinions - say, wanting a Green Party candidate to win, but preferring a Democrat to a Republican, and anything is better than a Tea Party member - approval voting falls on its face. It's trivially easy to come up with scenarios in which people who have ordinal preferences, but use approval voting and elect a Condorcet loser (someone who would straight up lose a 1:1 election with another candidate), because their preferences can not be expressed. IRV (or some other system with preferences expressed beyond "yes/no") fix this problem at the cost of only a little complexity.

[Formless]

So what's your opinion on more elaborate cardinal voting systems? Like, say, rate each candidate on a scale from -10 to +10?