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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#161

Post by solidsnack9000 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #108
tastyfreeze wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senators were meant to represent each state's government not the people directly. The Senate, by being once removed from the people, was supposed to take a longer more measured view on issues. The 17th Amendment[1] broke that and made senators elected by the people. The people have the House. The House has also been broken over time. In 1929 the House was capped at 435 members. Since then the number of people that a…

> Doing away with the Electoral College and going for a direct democracy is a recipe for disaster. Direct democracy does not work on a large scale. This is a talking point that doesn't make any sense. Electing the president and vice president by popular vote is not "direct democracy". It is how virtually every other representative democracy with a presidential system elects their executive leaders.

Electing them by popular vote is "direct election". It is true that many countries do that:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/22/among-democ...

However, many countries also do not do it -- and many countries elect a "president" who does not directly control the executive branch, while indirectly electing a "prime minister" or "chancellor" with such control (as in Austria or France).

In many cases, the prime minister is appointed by the president, and in some cases, they could theoretically appoint almost any adult citizen they want; but in practice, they have to elect someone that the legislature is going to accept and work with; and in many cases, the legislature can bring about a vote of no confidence and cause the government to fall.

There are a lot of details here and it seems like a matrix of four to ten columns might be needed to meaningfully get even a bird's eye view.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#162

Post by [deleted] »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #153
johnthuss wrote: post #15

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…

The irony? Nowhere, that I'm aware of, is there anything in the founding documents about limiting choice to two parties. We can't keep filtering everything through a binary lens and expect to get anything but binary opposing views. The tool (i.e. The Constitution) is fine. The problem is at this point it's being used as a hammer and it's a screwdriver. Ya can't blame the tool for those who insist on misusing it.

[deleted]

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#163

Post by rayiner »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46
johnthuss wrote: post #15

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…

> It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2…

> If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress.

Not at all. Republicans have won the Congressional popular vote more times than democrats since 1992, and are about to win it again. There has only been one election since 1992 where Republicans won more House seats while losing the Congressional popular vote. They’re 2% ahead in the generic Congressional ballot right now. You can’t blame that on gerrymandering or whatever.

Republicans consistently lose the Presidential popular vote because their incentive is to run the most right-wing person who can win the vote that actually counts, the Electoral College vote. For Congress, republicans have to contest at least some seats in New York and California. But for the Presidency they don’t care if a single person in those states votes for them.

If we used a nationwide popular vote, the GOP would just run someone closer to the median of their House delegation, which consistently does win the popular vote.

To get an idea of what things might look like in a counter-factual world, look at this three-way poll in a Cheney/Trump/Biden matchup: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-premise-poll-li.... Biden would get 36%, Cheney 20%, and Trump 45%. Shifting to a popular vote would move the coalitions around a bit: Republicans would have to care a little more about holding onto Romney/Biden suburbs. But it doesn’t mean consistent democratic majorities.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#164

Post by abigail95 »

dbrueck wrote: post #62

I like the idea of the Constitution as a living document, updated over time, but I'm also really glad it's so hard to amend. It's not perfect, but there are usually extremely good reasons for pretty much everything in there, and so if we're going to change something, it seems like a prerequisite should be a deep understanding of why something was put in there in the first place. Take the Electoral College. It's en vo…

To me the first step to fix this is understanding why anyone would want to amend it?

It seems like it was set up to be pretty bare bones, to resolve international and interstate disputes.

Today it looks like the federal government spends more in each state than the states do on themselves. This means that people in Texas (as a whole) have more say over spending in New York than people in New York do.

This makes it impossible for new states to enter the union, and you end up with spending policy in every state close to the median national voter, which makes everyone unhappy.

I think you should revoke incoropration and let each states constitution reign supreme as was originally intended.

California wants legal marijuana but the (badly interpreted) commerce clause makes this technically illegal.

NYC wants appropriate gun laws set by its residents, but due to 2A, it can't.

Revoke 14A and the temperature of the federal government will cool down.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#165

Post by [deleted] »

ISL wrote: post #22
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.

It is a feature. The Constitution defines a series of feedback loops with different time-constants: House: 2 yr President: 4 yr Senate: 6 yr President-term-limit: 8 yr Supreme-Court justice: ~16 years (per Google for average term) Constitutional Amendment: Hard. ~13.5 years between updates, potentially infinite duration. (231 years since Bill of Rights was added, 17 amendments since then) Each of these allows for dif…

[deleted]

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#166

Post by edmcnulty101 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46
johnthuss wrote: post #15

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…

> It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2…

The framers of the constitution did not intend for presidential election by popular vote.

The intention was for state legislatures to nominate electors who would then vote for president.

It wasn't until mid 1800's that states started elections (of electors) by popular vote. Note: still through an elector proxy.

Also this is not a government run by popular vote, it is a mixture of state and population based government and also representation democracy not direct democracy.

In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.

The fact that people feel that states shouldn't have equal say and equal power is to me a huge breakdown of society.

Having California run the entire country would be a nightmare.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#167

Post by edmcnulty101 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #150
prottog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cap on the size of the House should be lifted, so that an approximately equal number of people are represented by each representative, no matter what state you live in. I don't see the problem in both California and Wyoming getting two senators, since that's (as you mention) precisely the point of the Senate. It's very deliberately built in to the American political system that the will of the half-plus-one major…

> Let's have fifty vibrant laboratories of democracy. They'll need to stop trading with each other, then. cf. current CA legislation that will make it hard/impossible for other states to sell pork in CA that was not raised in accordance with CA law. Now, I happen to agree with the CA legislation, and would love it to cause a change in pork rearing nationwide. But you have to see the writing on the wall: with the leve…

Or people just don't trade with California and California doesn't have any pork.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#168

Post by kcplate »

Arainach wrote: post #147
midoridensha wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is how virtually every other representative democracy with a presidential system elects their executive leaders. And which countries are those? Russia Turkey El Salvador Philippines Not exactly paragons of democracy. Face it: the Presidential system itself is a disaster. A Parliamentary system is what you want if you want a democratic country with high-quality governance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of... The list is far longer than that.

How many of those countries on that list would you put forth as good examples of a stable political system? I counted five, and that’s being fairly generous since two of the five has had some political upheaval in the last 50 years.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#169

Post by edmcnulty101 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #105
prottog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cap on the size of the House should be lifted, so that an approximately equal number of people are represented by each representative, no matter what state you live in. I don't see the problem in both California and Wyoming getting two senators, since that's (as you mention) precisely the point of the Senate. It's very deliberately built in to the American political system that the will of the half-plus-one major…

Quoted post unavailable.

That would violate the 13th amendment. Abolishing slavery is literally in the constitution up there with freedom of speech and right to carry arms.
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