Canada’s first constitution was 1867 then we rewrote it in 1982.
I think shorter elections really only work in parliamentary systems where you’re not stuck with some dumbfuck like Trump in office for an almost guaranteed 4 years and an added bonus is if there’s too much gridlock you can just say “fuck it, new government” and call a snap election.
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That’s a good point. Because the US has fixed elections it makes it harder to shorten them.
More reason to fire up the old constitution shredomatic.
Term limits are stupid. They get rid of institutional memory and shift power away from the legislature and towards the executive. As @spidercrab noted, they also increase the power of lobbyists.
It’s better to get rid of some of the advantages of incumbency. By drawing smaller congressional districts that are more competitive and allow for a greater relevancy of retail politics, we can make politicians more responsive to their constituents.
Mitch McConnell may be horrible, but imagine replacing him with your typical under-50 Republican running for Senate. They may not have his legislative skill, but their policy goals are possibly worse.
I would, however, like to require politicians to give up one office before running for another one.
Local newspapers are horrible these days. You would be funneling money to corporate media chains.
If longer terms decrease the time spent campaigning/fundraising, we would see Senators doing less of such business.
The first probably isn’t and the second definitely isn’t happening without changing the Constitution on a level that goes beyond a few amendments.
I would increase the size of the Senate so that every election has a Senate seat in each state up for grabs. This would mean either three or six Senators per state.
The Wyoming rule is one idea out there for increasing the size of the House. My modified version is that the smallest state should have x representatives, for some value of x that is greater than one.
The question is: at what size does the House become too big to be practically managed?
My idea for weakening the executive branch is to break up the unitary executive by having other elected offices within the executive branch. For sure, I would like the Attorney General to be elected to make the Department of Justice more independent. Most states have an elected AG, why not the entire country?
My version of ranked choice would be a top-four jungle primary to winnow the field to manageable shortlist and instant-runoff voting to choose between the final four.
The Founding Fathers cosplaying as impartial philosopher kings is how we got our current constitution.
I agree with this. So, the question is what approach do we have? Are we seeking to create a system that maximizes the “right” outcomes within the constraint of appearing at least somewhat democratic? Are we seeking to maximize authenticity so that government expresses the will of the people, even when the people are wrong?
This will increase the use of caucuses and nominating conventions.
The effect might not be that huge. I believe Trump still wins in 2016 if you massively expand the House/Electoral College.
Why get rid of presidential debates?
Electoral fusion (cross endorsement) should be allowed.
The US should have an agency that maintains a massive citizen database like Elections Canada does in Canada.
Have you considered the possibility that part of why Canada is different from the US on this is cultural in nature? America on a parliamentary system would probably have the media constantly pushing the “who would win in a snap election” story. American national identity is tied to the political system.
It would be if you changed the constitution to make it so.
It’s impossible to come up with a dumbfuck-proof system of government if people elect dumbfucks, unless you make government so powerless that good politicians can’t accomplish anything either.
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No that’s the point. They’re horrible because the lost 90% of their revenue because of craigslist. If you make a bunch of money available to them they can be good again.
Local newspapers aren’t locally-owned anymore. You’re trying to prop up a media landscape that no longer exists.
It doesn’t exist because there’s no money. If you give them money it could exist again.
How do you prevent that money from mainly going to Gannett and similar companies?
Remove the ability to pardon people from the executive branch.
It’s always seemed pretty strange to me. You could still have a process for the rare good kind of pardons that uses Congress + President.
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I think you should overhaul your whole parliamentary system and move to one with a PM/Chancellor elected by parliament. And instead of a bobblehead President you could either take the Queen back, or, if I may make a very bold suggestion:
Think about it. I bet about everyone here would prefer King Harry over President Trump…
Becoming the UK isn’t even working for the UK.
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Deconstruction
No way, being able to take back the House and use it as a check on a corrupt POTUS is really key.
Better way is to reverse Citizens United and pass a law limiting campaign advertising to a specific window of time. Maybe a month before a given election.
Yes.
Make it more proportional, but statewide elections in the upper chamber are good. California just shouldn’t have the same number of senators as Wyoming.
Yes
Agree in principle. I might not go quite so far. Would be interesting to make the House too big to meet in DC and make all votes remote, while drastically increasing the size.
Hell yes
Fuck yes
I’m torn. Maybe we should only have them in the upper chamber, in part because many senators already served a while in the House. There are also a lot of powerful representatives of color who it would be a shame to lose after 6 years in the House.
Imagine a world with no lobbyists. It’s easy if you try.
They would be forced back to more reasonable/defensible positions. Somewhat, at least.
Investigated and prosecuted by an independent agency.
Money != speech, especially not corporate money, especially not dark money. You want to spend $250M advocating for a certain party? Should be illegal, but at the very least put your name on it.
It’s not about counting them, it’s about making them equal. The most pressing issue isn’t that Democrats in Mississippi have fairly meaningless votes, it’s that voters in Wyoming have way more powerful votes than voters in California in presidential and senate races.
I’d go the opposite way. You want to be on the ballot in the general? Then your party will hold a debate for the primary, will use all the public infrastructure, follow all rules, etc. No more party leadership fucking people in primaries.
Plenty of ways to impose a start date.
Registration for the ballot starts 45 days out, ballot locks 30 days out, campaign filing must fall in that window and campaigns that don’t exist can’t raise or spend money.
Pretty sure that would be Constitutional.
It’s parliamentary skill and it’s a major negative. But we should fix the issues he exploits, regardless of term limits.
It would require an amendment but it would be pretty cool if the Senate expanded to 3 Senators per state and like 50 Senators elected by national popular vote, split into 3 classes as well.
Obviously never going to happen, but you could do cool things with that like say anything that a majority of the national Senators want to bring to a floor for a vote must get an up/down vote.
This is good.
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It takes an amendment to expand the Senate, but it takes unanimous agreement by the states to make it so that different states have different numbers of Senators (if you don’t abolish the Senate).
If you want an example of an upper legislature with nationally elected members, take a look at the Philippines. (Hint: we don’t want to be like the Philippines.) They have staggered elections for Senate conducted on an at-large basis. Twelve seats are up for grabs at a time and voters fill out a national ballot with up to twelve choices. Top twelve get seats.
Yeah I don’t want the whole thing nationally elected, but a portion of it seems interesting. I guess it could give the party with the presidency too much power, though.
this sort of makes sense if you’re keeping the first past the post system that basically narrows the field to no more than two viable parties at any time, but if you make the other changes I suggested then third parties are viable and this is unnecessary