CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM

The US Constitution has been the overriding law of the land for over 230 years. It has been amended 27 times. The Amendment process is slow and cumbersome. This may be by design. In my opinion, many aspects of the Constitution have become unwieldy and hold overs from a no longer relevant era.

I have some thoughts for reform, which I will present here. This list is not meant to be exhaustive.

• The ERA must be ratified. It is about 200 years overdue. I looked online and its status is a hot mess. We need to fix this. I don’t know if this would provide a permanent fix for the Dobbs decision, which also needs to be fixed
• The electoral college must be eliminated. Everything must be by popular vote. That is the easiest type of Democracy to understand. If it wasn’t for the electoral college, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now in.
• Supreme Court reform: The number of justices should always be the number of district courts. The number of district courts should always be an odd number. When the number of district courts is expanded, the expansion of the number of Supreme Court justices should be adjusted automatically. There should be term limits. The term should be the number of district courts in years with one new justice appointed each year. The terms of the existing justices would be adjusted based on the number of years served in descending order to coincide with the one appointment per year schedule. In the case of resignation due to illness or whatever, an appointment would be made to fill the unexpired term. In either case, at the end of the term, if its warranted, the justice can be renominated for another term, going through the full vetting process. As part of any vetting process, candidates must release five years of tax returns and financial statements, to be thoroughly scrutinized by the FBI and Forensic accountants. A viable system of ethics review and recusal must be set to prevent conflicts and the integrity of the court. The appointments would become effective, coincident with the retirements, on June 1 of each year. In the event of a resignation, the current president shall nominate the replacement if they are of the same party as the president who nominated the retiree or there is more than six months left in the term of the current president and the appointment will become effective as soon as confirmed.
• Senate reform: All rules of the type as the filibuster must be abolished forever. It doesn’t make sense in a democracy. The whole structure of the Senate is anti-democratic. States such as South Dakota and Wyoming should not have the same influence as states such as California, New York, and Pennsylvania. I would like to see the Senate go away completely, but that’s not going to happen so aggregating their vote with the house on bills would cut down on the unfairness.
• Second Amendment reform: The Second Amendment was created to make foreign powers think twice about invading a country weakened from a bloody revolution. Elimination of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines aren’t going to change that. The Second needs some clarification to become a reasonable law of the land. Its purpose would be served with 25% of the weapons currently available. What country would attack the largest defense budget in the world?