The following is the first installment in a TPM series, Not Safe At Home. The series takes a look at fixes the next Congress and President should consider to how our democracy works. This essay is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
It’s hard to believe we don’t have that now… oh wait, Republicans.
My bad.
And a unicorn in every pot?
Same equivalence as long as the GOP persists in their long history of voter suppression.
Sorry to say this but good luck with that. Some addled segment of the USA strives to restrict the right to vote at every opportunity. I don’t think they’d let anything like a ‘right to vote’ amendment for the US constitution pass…or they’d make sure it took decades to get approval from the states.
If we are going to amend the constitution, we should also eliminate the electoral college and presidential primaries by providing for direct election of the president by ranked choice voting.
Also, the Senate should be proportional, including either multistate or national senators. (Really, Dakota, you gamed the system in the 1880s when you split yourself in two to get extra Senators, time for some payback)
Eliminating the electoral college is a great idea, but there is no way it could be approved by 3/4 of the states. And the Constitution itself says that no amendment can take away equal representation of states in the Senate.
But for the electoral college there is a work-around that could be done if the Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House. Simply increase the number of Representatives in the House to 650 (the size of the British Parliament), 1,000, or more.
Ahem
Its possible the next time Democrats regain power. The question is whether we have the will to use it.
I’ve been saying for years that we should do this.
Sure, it might not get 2/3 of both houses of Congress, or even if it did, it might not get 3/4 of the states.
But if they won’t ratify it, at least put them on the freakin’ spot over it. Bring out into the open the fact that they’re opposing something that no reasonable person should be against.
Here are some other Constitutional amendments worth considering:
The ERA again (of course!) only this time, include equal rights for LGBT persons as well as women.
A war powers amendment that would sunset any declaration of war or any other Congressional authorization of the use of military force after five years unless renewed by Congress. Also, the presence of American troops in any other country for any reason other than guarding embassies would similarly have to be renewed.
A labor rights amendment guaranteeing the right of workers to organize for purposes of collective bargaining without interference or harassment from management.
I could probably think of a few more, without getting into any topics that might be controversial outside of the rightmost 1/3 of the population.
This article misses the biggest problem: gerrymandering. Minority districts (and dem-leaning districts, in general) get packed or cracked to minimize their voting power in many Republican controlled states. It is absolutely astonishing to me that the Supreme Court has upheld that gerrymandering is constitutional. As a result, we need a constitutional amendment to prevent it.
A constitutional amendment could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.
Instead, state legislation, The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
It requires enacting states with 270 electoral votes to award their electoral votes to the winner of the most national popular votes.
The bill mandates
“Each member state shall conduct a statewide popular election for President and Vice President of the United States.”
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Preaching to the choir.
Sure, we need one, but is it useful to even be wasting space on this topic? None of us are likely to see this in our lifetime. It’s a nice thought though.
As long as one segment of the population benefits from lower voter turnout this will go nowhere. It’s better to try and figure out how to get your people to the polls and remove the obstacles of getting them there and their ability to actually vote.
Can we also throw in the Equal Rights Amendment? https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/ I have daughters and I think this would be helpful to them.
In Virginia, The Dems finally came to their senses to acknowledge that change happens at the state level instead of voting in just Presidential elections expecting change from the top like Berners are doing.
After two plus decades, the GOP majority in the state legislature has been tossed to the dust bin… Progressive legislation has passed and signed by the governor.
We had one in the 15th Amendment, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
I’m all for fighting voter suppression schemes, but an amendment worded this way is missing something critical. The right to vote for what? If this amendment passes, do all citizens have the right to vote in the legislature? Less absurdly, if judicial elections are replaced by appointments in some state or municipality, is that a denial of the right to vote? Maybe this can be fixed by something like “in duly held public elections,” but as it is it makes it sound as if all citizens get to weigh in whenever and wherever.
It seems like voting comes under the First Amendment protection of free speech. Voting is the ultimate expression of speech.
Since the Supreme Court ruled years ago that money in politics was free speech (Buckley v Valeo), then surely voting itself is also a basic First Amendment right.
The Constitution isn’t the problem – the problem is that too many voters just don’t care about what it says, or worse, disagree with it (and that’s not a problem with the Constitution). Since every word and every sentence – no matter how clear – still requires interpretation, clearer drafting isn’t helpful if the bodies interpreting and enforcing the laws disagree with their substance and are willing to misinterpret them. Judges and other government officials frequently interpret laws to mean the opposite of what they appear to clearly say. So no matter how clear the Constitution is on any point, conservative Supreme Court justices as well as other government officials will continue to interpret it in the manner most favorable to their constituents. See Shelby County vs. Holder, where the conservatives argued that the ongoing protections of the Voting Rights Act should be denied despite overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress for the VRA’s reauthorization, based on the bad-faith argument that since the VRA seemed to be helpful in preventing voter suppression, it’s protections were somehow no longer necessary.