Comprehensive Election Reform Amendment

[cabiness42]

A couple friends of mine and I have been kicking around an idea for a Constitutional Amendment to drastically overhaul our election system. We understand the likelihood of actually passing such an amendment is pretty much zero, but there is some good political discussion here so we'd like some input as to whether these changes would improve anything:

 

1) Presidential term is increased from four to six years, with a one term limit. Election years will be years evenly divisible by six.

 

2) Senate terms remain six years, but election years will be changed such that each state will have one Senate election in years evenly divisible by six and one in years evenly divisible by three but not by six.

 

3) House of Representatives terms are increased from two to three years, with election years in every year evenly divisible by three.

 

4) All changes in 1) through 3) above shall be effective in the first year evenly divisible by twelve that is at least four years later than the date of the ratification of the amendment.

 

5) For the purposes of Congressional apportionment and the drawing of districts, residents of the District of Columbia shall be considered residents of Maryland. The decennial redistricting of House districts must be done by using a Congressionally approved algorithm that makes districts as compact as possible and does not take into account demographic data that may determine likely voter affiliation. This change shall be effective for the first election year after the next release of Decennial Census data that is at least two years later than the date of ratification of the amendment.

 

6) Candidates for all Senate and House seats shall be determined via an open primary, with the top two recipients, regardless of party affiliation, advancing to the general election. The date of the primary for all Senate and House seats in all states shall be the first Tuesday after the first Monday in May, and this date shall be a Federal Holiday. States that hold primary elections or caucuses for the office of President and/or any state/local offices must also hold them on this day.

 

7) Election Day shall remain the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, but it shall now be a Federal Holiday.

 

8) Congress shall provide funding for and set standards by which states must create and issue, free of charge, photo identification cards that will be available to all citizens who are 18 years of age or older. These identification cards shall serve as a voter registration and entitle the holder the right to vote in all elections.

 

9) All changes in 6) through 8) above shall be effective in the first year that is at least two years later than the date of ratification of the amendment.

[BigSqwert]

No proposed term limits for the House or Senate?

[cabiness42]

No proposed term limits for the House or Senate?

 

That was a heated subject among the group, but there was no consensus so it was left out.

[pettie4sox]

I'm not budging unless you put term limits on there. Career politicians are what got us into the mess we're in now.

[Jenksismyhero]

A couple friends of mine and I have been kicking around an idea for a Constitutional Amendment to drastically overhaul our election system. We understand the likelihood of actually passing such an amendment is pretty much zero, but there is some good political discussion here so we'd like some input as to whether these changes would improve anything:

 

1) Presidential term is increased from four to six years, with a one term limit. Election years will be years evenly divisible by six.

 

2) Senate terms remain six years, but election years will be changed such that each state will have one Senate election in years evenly divisible by six and one in years evenly divisible by three but not by six.

 

3) House of Representatives terms are increased from two to three years, with election years in every year evenly divisible by three.

 

4) All changes in 1) through 3) above shall be effective in the first year evenly divisible by twelve that is at least four years later than the date of the ratification of the amendment.

 

5) For the purposes of Congressional apportionment and the drawing of districts, residents of the District of Columbia shall be considered residents of Maryland. The decennial redistricting of House districts must be done by using a Congressionally approved algorithm that makes districts as compact as possible and does not take into account demographic data that may determine likely voter affiliation. This change shall be effective for the first election year after the next release of Decennial Census data that is at least two years later than the date of ratification of the amendment.

 

6) Candidates for all Senate and House seats shall be determined via an open primary, with the top two recipients, regardless of party affiliation, advancing to the general election. The date of the primary for all Senate and House seats in all states shall be the first Tuesday after the first Monday in May, and this date shall be a Federal Holiday. States that hold primary elections or caucuses for the office of President and/or any state/local offices must also hold them on this day.

 

7) Election Day shall remain the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, but it shall now be a Federal Holiday.

 

8) Congress shall provide funding for and set standards by which states must create and issue, free of charge, photo identification cards that will be available to all citizens who are 18 years of age or older. These identification cards shall serve as a voter registration and entitle the holder the right to vote in all elections.

 

9) All changes in 6) through 8) above shall be effective in the first year that is at least two years later than the date of ratification of the amendment.

 

Pssh, trying to suppress the vote. Typical liberal.

 

Like the one term president idea. Don't like increasing terms for legislators. Don't like the open primary and top 2 candidates advance idea. Give the other side a chance at least. And I really like #7. The rest, eh. No hard feelings one way or the other.

[BigSqwert]

Add:

 

Those who vote get a $50 tax credit applied that year.

[Balta1701]

Pssh, trying to suppress the vote. Typical liberal.

If you actually gave everyone an ID that works then it isn't voter suppression. That's the trick - you make sure that the group you don't want to vote has an ID that doesn't work. That's why gun licenses work and school ID's don't.

[cabiness42]

Pssh, trying to suppress the vote. Typical liberal.

 

Like the one term president idea. Don't like increasing terms for legislators. Don't like the open primary and top 2 candidates advance idea. Give the other side a chance at least. And I really like #7. The rest, eh. No hard feelings one way or the other.

 

The point of increasing terms for the House from 2 to 3 years was to decrease the amount of time they are running for re-election and hopefully increase the amount of time they are actually legislating. With 90%+ incumbents getting re-elected anyway, there's not much downside to the change.

 

The open primary is in response to the number of Congressional districts that are so one-sided. There are too many districts where the primary is the de facto election. If you have an extreme district, you are going to have one party winning the seat anyway. At least in this case, with two members of the same party in the general election, you have a chance of getting somebody more moderate.

 

[cabiness42]

Add:

 

Those who vote get a $50 tax credit applied that year.

 

Not a bad idea at all, but we were trying to stick to major changes that would require a Constitutional Amendment. Your idea is something that could simply be passed by Congress (or individual states, if they wanted).

 

[Balta1701]

I note that you didn't remove the Electoral College.

[cabiness42]

If you actually gave everyone an ID that works then it isn't voter suppression. That's the trick - you make sure that the group you don't want to vote has an ID that doesn't work. That's why gun licenses work and school ID's don't.

 

Something I neglected to add is that states would be allowed to double the voter ID's as something else (most likely a driver's license) and they can then charge for it in that case, but the free option would still have to be available. That way you don't have to have a separate ID just for voting if you don't want to.

[cabiness42]

I note that you didn't remove the Electoral College.

 

That was again a debated subject, but like the term limits, did not have a consensus.

[StrangeSox]

I don't really see term limits being effective at fixing anything. That means that, instead of career politicians who are dedicating their lives to serving in elected office, we have people who are going to be there a max of a couple of terms and then they'll be back out in the private sector.

[StrangeSox]

Making election days Federal Holidays is good, but plenty of people don't get off on many federal holidays. Make election day a weekend.

[cabiness42]

Making election days Federal Holidays is good, but plenty of people don't get off on many federal holidays. Make election day a weekend.

 

That was discussed, but so many people go out of town on weekends that we thought that could hinder vote totals. At least by making it a Federal Holiday you get employees of Federal, state, and local governments, banks, and markets off work. Perhaps a compromise is to have extended "early voting" hours at county offices on the weekend before Election Day.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

If you actually gave everyone an ID that works then it isn't voter suppression. That's the trick - you make sure that the group you don't want to vote has an ID that doesn't work. That's why gun licenses work and school ID's don't.

 

Poor people can't pick up their ID's, poor people don't have mail boxes, some poor people don't have homes.

 

Trust me, if a Republican came up with this IDea you'd find some way that it's discriminatory towards a portion of the population that votes D.

[Balta1701]

Poor people can't pick up their ID's, poor people don't have mail boxes, some poor people don't have homes.

 

Trust me, if a Republican came up with this IDea you'd find some way that it's discriminatory towards a portion of the population that votes D.

And if it didn't keep poor(black) people from voting you'd be angry over the hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost.

[Texsox]

Which is a worse evil, money or career politicians?

[StrangeSox]

well, all of the recent insanity about shutting down government and defaulting on the debt was driven by the neophyte politicians, not the career guys

[Jake]

Pssh, trying to suppress the vote. Typical liberal.

 

Like the one term president idea. Don't like increasing terms for legislators. Don't like the open primary and top 2 candidates advance idea. Give the other side a chance at least. And I really like #7. The rest, eh. No hard feelings one way or the other.

 

I would eliminate state support for primaries. I don't like primary elections at all. It is one of the new-ish institutions that helps ensure that our representatives are far from the center of the public.

 

Increasing the terms for legislators makes sense, because a huge problem with the House presently is the short terms. All they do is fundraise and campaign. Not only does this affect their motives, it is a tremendous drag on their time. This is why you have the truism that nobody reads the bills; who has the time? These guys and gals work 12-16 hour days doing a million different things. There is no time for reading longform documents.

 

Term limits will make things terrible. The reason we have representatives is because we need people that become skilled at policymaking. If worthy people are re-elected often enough, they will become absolute experts on certain topics and generally become competent at legislating/governing. If you or I went to Congress, we'd spend the first 4-6 years just trying to figure s*** out. I have a lot of friends on the hill and all of the new Congresspeople don't know a damn thing. Just navigating the procedural matters is immensely time consuming. To have the breadth of expertise to have well-informed opinions on literally everything that gets voted on requires time. Or you can just go around and act like a crazy person and contribute nothing until you fizzle out, like Michele Bachmann or Ted Cruz. You'd have much more of the latter if you had term limits, because it would be the only way to communicate.

 

I note that you didn't remove the Electoral College.

 

I wouldn't agree to anything that retains the electoral college. It serves no good purpose. The Senate and gerrymandered districts are enough anti-democracy for me. Absolutely no good purpose is served by the electoral college. It just makes a few random places, independent of their merit as geographic locations, incredibly important while everyone else is ignored.

 

I don't really see term limits being effective at fixing anything. That means that, instead of career politicians who are dedicating their lives to serving in elected office, we have people who are going to be there a max of a couple of terms and then they'll be back out in the private sector.

 

In addition to what I said above about literally learning how to be a Congressperson, the private sector is very important here. If you don't like revolving doors, you'll hate term limits. You'll not only have people either going from lobbying positions to the Congress and vice versa, you'll have these people completely preoccupied with finding that kind of work during their short time in Congress. These people want to be involved in politics and they will do whatever they need to to find work if they can't even run for any more elections.

 

[mr_genius]

You need to take legal bribes out of politics. it's really the only way to fix it.

[cabiness42]

You need to take legal bribes out of politics. it's really the only way to fix it.

 

Our group was definitely not against this, but we really didn't even know where to begin to write something that a) would actually accomplish this and b) would have any chance of being enforced.

 

What we feel like we did is reduced the influence of money be reducing the frequency of elections, and reform the redistricting, and primary process to try to reduce some of the advantage of extremist candidates, who tend to benefit most from the money.

 

[Jake]

Just prior to Citizens United, things were pretty good as far as money goes. My staffer friends still tell me it isn't as bad as you think. It is just too hard to actually take bribes. Your biggest donors are people that aren't trying to sway you -- you already feel the same way as them. They no longer can give politicians or their staffers a bunch of kickbacks or things anymore, either. There is something like a $20 limit on purchased meals even, which is semi-hilarious (try to find a decent lunch for that much in DC)

[cabiness42]

I wouldn't agree to anything that retains the electoral college. It serves no good purpose. The Senate and gerrymandered districts are enough anti-democracy for me. Absolutely no good purpose is served by the electoral college. It just makes a few random places, independent of their merit as geographic locations, incredibly important while everyone else is ignored.

 

I definitely don't get the attitude of not supporting that improves things because it doesn't include everything you want. The EC was a hotly debated topic. There wasn't a consensus, plus, in our hypothetical world, there is no chance of getting 3/4 of the states to approve it because all the small states would be against it.

 

From my standpoint, it doesn't matter a lot one way or the other. Indiana has 2.10% of the population and 2.04% of the electoral votes, so it is one of the states that is neither over nor under represented by the EC.

[cabiness42]

Just prior to Citizens United, things were pretty good as far as money goes. My staffer friends still tell me it isn't as bad as you think. It is just too hard to actually take bribes. Your biggest donors are people that aren't trying to sway you -- you already feel the same way as them. They no longer can give politicians or their staffers a bunch of kickbacks or things anymore, either. There is something like a $20 limit on purchased meals even, which is semi-hilarious (try to find a decent lunch for that much in DC)

 

There are plenty of great places to eat in DC that aren't that expensive. Getting a decent hotel for less than $200/night is a different story.