Political what-if: A second Constitutional Convention

[robkelk]

This board's rules are "Have Fun, and Play Nice". It's time to have fun in this sub-forum.

If there was to be a second Constitutional Convention (Yes, you had one before -- almost nobody remembers the Articles of Confederation) called today, what would you like to see included in its results?

Here's my wish-list - implement all of these and you'll drag the political system in the USA kicking and screaming into the 20th century. (Yes, I know this is the 21st century. I'm not expecting a miracle to happen here.)

Well, let's see. Here's my inexpert opinion.

[*]Dissolve the Electoral College and have Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections by direct vote.

Seems sensible, although you'll probably want to determine how you define 'direct vote'. Do you mean 'state wide popular votes, count by state', or 'nation wide popular vote', or 'US citizen wide popular vote'. It matters a fair bit.

Puerto Rico currently does not have any capacity to vote for the US presidential election, despite it being bigger than several states of the US combined. Nor for that matter does DC IIRC.

It's long past time to stop disenfranchising the territories. US citizen wide popular vote.

[*]In order to remove the appearance of conflict of interest, anybody who is responsible for drawing the boundaries of electoral districts must surrender the right to vote. (This won't eliminate gerrymandering, either, but it'll reduce it.)

Which right, the active or the passive (that is, the right to cast a ballot or the right to be elected).

I meant the active, but let's include the passive as well.

[*]One does not lose the right to vote simply because one is in jail. Anyone serving a term in a federal prison (owned by either the government or the private sector) is deemed to be resident at the person's last address of record before being arrested, or if the person had no address of record is deemed to be resident in the district where the arrest took place.

Or the address of the jail. If nothing else, it makes it easier to administratively track where ballots need to go. Yes, this incentivizes pushing all prisoners into a single district for first past the post system, that's part of why you break the first past the post system.

Using the address of the jail incentivizes putting all inmates in a single district, no matter what electoral system one uses, in that all of their votes would apply only to a single district's elections.

As for tracking where ballots need to go, that's a solved problem with the current mail-in ballot system.

[*]Separate the powers of the Head of Government and the Head of State. Let the Head of State handle all the ceremonial stuff (meeting with other Heads of State, pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey, holding parties in the Rose Garden, staging photo ops, etc.) and defend the Constitution from a Head of Government who's gone too far, and let the Head of Government concentrate of governing (meeting with other Heads of Government, working with the House and Senate Majority leaders to turn bills into law, issuing executive orders, etc.).

You won't ever see this happen in the US. There's simply too much political power vested in the president being the Head of State, that the president as Head of Government won't want to give up.

Which is exactly why it needs to happen.

[*]The total hourly remuneration (salary and benefits added together) of a Congressperson may not exceed five times the legislated hourly minimum wage in that Congressperson's congressional district. Any benefit available at no charge to everyone in a Congressperson's congressional district does not count toward this salary and benefit cap. (It's taxpayer money that funds their salaries and benefits - no fair asking those taxpayers to fund putting a Congresscritter into The 1%.)

Or the federal minimum wage, whichever is lower. Any district with no minimum wage is considered to have established a minimum wage of $0.00.

I'll note that at 5 times minimum wage, presuming 15 dollars as the minimum wage, is only 75 dollars. And yes, that's a lot of money, per hour. But it may be a little too little, once you account for the fact that a Congresscritter has a lot of responsibilities, and often works long hours, with the expectation that they are on call for emergency work regardless of their own desires.

On the other hand, maybe that should be considered only for hours the Congresscritter is attending the people's business. Time spent working for the party (like begging for donations) or for their own interests (like begging for donations) should not be counted.

That's why I said hourly remuneration - somebody who's putting in extra hours working for their constituents will earn more than somebody putting in only a 40-hour work week and then going off to fundraise or schmooze.