Five amendments to the US constitution I'd like to see.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1) No official involved in the enforcement of the law, be it as a sheriff, prosecutor, judge or otherwise, shall be appointed by election, or answerable directly or indirectly to anyone who is. All such officials must be appointed by, and answerable to, independent bodies.

2) Strip congress of the power to impeach a president "for high crimes and misdemeanours". Have a referendum on the following alternatives
2a) Congress shall have no power to remove a president
2b) Congress shall have the power to remove the president by majority vote, without need for a pretext.

3) An armed militia being the greatest possible threat to the security of a free state, the federal and state governments shall have the power to regulate ownership of weapons, and no form of right to keep or bear arms will exist.

4) Each state shall receive seats in the house of Representatives according to its population. The vote of each Senator shall carry a weight proportional to the size of the state they represent. The president shall be elected by popular vote (or, if 2b, by vote of Congress).

5) Congressional districting shall be the responsibilty of a non-partisan (not bipartisan) independent body. It shall assign districts according to tightly-specified criteria (insert criteria about equal population, roughly circular shape and boundaries following roads, rivers etc here), so as to give it little freedom to gerrymander.

[Glorfindel]

1. #4 sounds particularly good.

Each senator from California would have a vote worth 66 votes of a senator from Wyoming. That would go a long way toward democratizing the US Senate, which is currently less democratic than the UK's House of Lords.

[Duckhunter935]

2. disagree

Large states already have the house by population. Senate is equal for all states large and small.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Why is a mixture of fair and unfair representation better than fair throughout?

It really is as simple as "fair" vs "unfair" - there is no remotely sane reason why someone living in a region where the state lines have been drawn closer together should have more power than someone living where they are further apart.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

22. Then break-up larger states like CA, FL and NY

[loli phabay]

28. this, its the only way it would work unless you want to force lots of states to want to leave.

[Logical]

5. Which is stupid! Nt

[Glassunion]

12. Why not just kick Wyoming out of the Union?

Their vote would no longer carry any weight, so why bother allowing them to vote at all.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

23. Why bother allowing people from Las Vegas to vote at all?

There are the same number of them as there are people from Wyoming, so their votes should carry the same amount of weight.

[Glassunion]

31. Exactly!

In fact maybe just California alone should have the vote for everyone.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. I think you're confused.

What I'm proposing is that everyone should have the vote, and all votes should carry equal weight.

You appear to disagree with this, but I can't work out why - is "a small number of people should have a small number of votes, rather than no votes or lots of votes" what is troubling you?

[badtoworse]

3. No. 5 is OK in principle, but how to obtain a non-partisan, independent body...

...and who gets to decide who's on it? I would strongly oppose the first four.

[Logical]

7. What's wrong with 1? nt

[geek tragedy]

13. it's factually impossible. it would mean that cops and prosecutors wouldn't be accountable

to anyone/

But, who would hire them? If no elected officials had any authority over them, who would be responsible for their conduct?

[badtoworse]

15. I couldn't have stated it any better - nt.

[Kingofalldems]

8. I like 1,3, 5. Especially 3.

[FarCenter]

9. Re 5) -- if you can't gerrymander, you can't create black or hispanic districts

Part of the reason for getting away from compact, roughly circular districts was to provide a means for ensuring minority representation. Of course, once you relax constraints, all sorts of other games become possible.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. I think that's a feature, not a bug.

No gerrymandering, for any purpose, even superficially laudable ones, ever. If the political system isn't wholly clean, it will just get dirtier with time.

[badtoworse]

26. IOW, gerrymandering is OK as long as I like the results

[FarCenter]

27. THE SUPREME COURT: IN 5-4 VOTE, REJECT DISTRICTS DRAWN WITH RACE THE 'PREDOMINANT FACTOR'

In a bitterly contested decision that could erase some of the recent electoral gains made by blacks in Congress and state legislatures, the Supreme Court ruled today that the use of race as a "predominant factor" in drawing district lines should be presumed to be unconstitutional.

The 5-to-4 decision declared unconstitutional Georgia's 11th Congressional District, now represented by a black Democrat, Cynthia A. McKinney, which the Georgia Legislature drew in 1992 to satisfy the Justice Department's insistence that a third majority-black district be created for the state's 11-member Congressional delegation.

But while Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion was phrased in quite sweeping terms, it left many important questions unanswered about how the new standard should be applied in other cases. Among the most pressing questions is how the lower courts are to decide when race has been the "predominant" factor as opposed to one factor among others in the ethnic, geographic and partisan stew of electoral politics.

Underscoring the remaining uncertainty, the Court announced only hours after issuing its decision today that it would hear and decide two more redistricting cases, from Texas and North Carolina, during its new term that begins in October. Today was the last day of the 1994-95 term.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/30/us/supreme-court-congressional-districts-justices-5-4-vote-reject-districts-drawn.html

The presumption was that blacks could not be elected except from black majority districts.

[jmowreader]

11. Some good, some bad

Number one sounds pretty good, except who'd choose the independent bodies?

Number two needs some work. We obviously need a way to get rid of a Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. How about this: the president can be removed by a Vote of No Confidence presented to the American people. A group wishing to remove the president must submit a Filing Fee in the amount of one hundred million dollars. Upon acceptance, the group will have eight weeks to sell their position to the American people. On the Tuesday of the eighth week, a national vote will be conducted. If at least 60 percent of all registered voters in the United States cast ballots in this election and at least 67.0 percent of those voters vote in favor of removing the president, the Filing Fee will be returned and the president and his entire administration will be removed from office, to be replaced by the Speaker of the House in a caretaker role only (he'll only be able to sign funding bills that maintain the government at its present level and may not pass or repeal laws or alter the tax structure) until a full presidential election can be conducted. If both voter thresholds are not met, the Filing Fee will be used to pay accountants to calculate the total cost of the Vote of No Confidence, and the group will pay the full cost of conducting it.

Number three...are you thinking something on the order of what Australia and Israel have done? If you can pull it off, it sounds promising.

Number four: You described how the House is already structured. Not sure if I like the idea of one senator having the ability to cast multiple votes; do you really want Ted Cruz to have 35 times the power of Bernie Sanders? How about this: sort the states according to population. States 31 through 50 keep two senators. States 21 through 30 get three, states 11 through 20 get four and states 1 through 10 get five. Directly electing the president is good.

Number five: There is one way to get rid of gerrymandering, and that's to make it not worth people's while to do it. And frankly, the only way to do THAT is to have a congressman elected by more than one district's residents. In states with five or fewer districts, make them all statewide offices. With more than five, have the congressman's own district plus the four closest to it vote on that congressman. I can also see the House and Senate leadership being nationally elected offices, but am not sure how you'd squeeze it in.

[geek tragedy]

14. 1 is factually impossible--it's literally impossible

that cops and judges and prosecutors would not in any way be accountable or under the authority of the democratically elected government. Unless you think the UN should invade us and appoint every cop, prosecutor, and judge.

2 is also foolhardy in either instance--either the president has absolute power or you give Congress the right to overrule the presidential election on a whim.

3-fine with that

4--why not just go unicameral? having weighted averages for Senate is hyper-convoluted.

5) there is no such thing as a non-partisan body when it comes to politics and power.

[Lost_Count]

16. As long as we are going full looney tunes...

... You should write in ice cream Tuesday for the masses!

[pnwmom]

17. I was expecting to see an Equal Rights Amendment.

Silly me.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. They passed that in '68.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

[pnwmom]

21. Very funny. That was 1868 and it didn't protect women's rights.

They did pass the ERA in 1972 but it failed because not enough legislatures ratified it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time. In 1972, it passed both houses of Congress and went to the state legislatures for ratification. The ERA failed to receive the requisite number of ratifications (38) before the final deadline mandated by Congress of June 30, 1982, and so it was not adopted. Feminist organizations have continued to work at the federal and state levels for the adoption of the ERA.

The ERA:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

[Captain Stern]

18. Thanks for the thought provoking list.

My two cents on each of them:

1) I don't like it. You're saying that none of those folks should be selected democratically, but that they should be selected by 'independent bodies'. Who selects the folks that are on members of the 'independent bodies'? I think we'd end up with the same problems.

2) You're amendment makes it really easy to remove a President, or impossible to remove a President. Neither one of those options is good. Maybe it would be better to just say congress can remove a sitting President, but clarify the reasons why.

3)I think you're essentially saying repeal the 2cnd amendment, and replacing it with it's opposite. I'm ok with that. It doesn't allow the federal government to guarantee or ban gun ownership, but it allows the individual states to. I think that works.

4) I'm against that. That amendment would essentially turn the Senate into the House. At that point, why have both?

5) It isn't legally practical, but I'm totally on board in principal. The political party that happens to be in power at the time shouldn't be able to control redistricting, regardless of which party is in power.

[struggle4progress]

20. A number of states seem to have redistricting commissions

[Nuclear Unicorn]

24. Sounds like the recipe foe a two-bit dictatorship

1. Judges don't enforce the law, they are part of the judiciary, not the executive branch.

You claim you don't want law enforcers -- the people who possess force of arms -- answerable to the electorate (Why?!?!) but appointed by independent bodies.

What bodies would these be? Where do they come from? What is the limit of their power? How are they removed from office? Which branch of government do they represent?

2a. Would leave people like Nixon in power 2b. could see a president removed by a political fad by low information voters (I know, I know, we don't have that problem in the US).

3. Considering your proposals in 1. and 2a. ...

NO! Whaddaya gonnado abowdit?

4. Only if you break-up large states so that all states have the same population.

5. No such body exists. See point 1. When politics are involved people get political.

It looks like you pretty much want to have a political landscape where you can rig the largest vote for yourself and then enforce your decrees with unaccountable thugs who guard a disarmed populace.

You're exactly the reason we have the constitution we do now.

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. the amendment I would most like to see is a ban on all campaign donations and severe restrictions on

lobbying - an amendment that essentially removed money from politics

[loli phabay]

29. this is the one that would have the most effect, and the one i would support.

[SecularMotion]

30. Two amendments I'd like to see

1) Explicit separation of church and state

2) Explicit separation of corporation and state.