A to-do list for repairing US democracy

 

If we're lucky enough  not to spiral down into dictatorship during this fall's Presidential election in the US, we need to have a ready-made to-do list for repairing democracy.

To start off a conversation on that, here's my current thinking…

Draft Proposed “Freedom Amendment” to the US Constitution

(Rationales, in green, are informational, not part of the amendment.)

In order to solidify and preserve democratic rule within these United States, these changes are hereby ordered to all United States policies and procedures:

1. Voting

1. No Electoral College. The Electoral College is hereby dissolved. Presidential elections shall henceforth be determined directly by majority vote of all United States citizens who are eligible to vote.

2. No commercial interference in elections. No for-profit corporation or company, nor any non-profit corporation or company that as their primary business offers products or services for commercial sale, may contribute to campaigns or other activities that could reasonably be seen as trying to affect election. (The ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is vacated.)

3. Restore the Voting Rights Act. The ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that voided section 4 is hereby reversed, restoring this Act to its full form and asserting full Constitutional backing to the Act. Preclearance is hereby required for all 50 states equally.

4. No “gerrymandering.” The practice of gerrymandering while drawing district boundaries at the federal and state levels is hereby disallowed.

5. Ranked-choice voting. All federal elections shall be handled via a ranked-choice voting process.

2. Ethics & Oversight

1. Supreme Court Ethics Code. The Supreme Court shall henceforth be governed by the same ethics code that binds all federal courts.

2. Congress and the Supreme Court shall be subject to term limits.

   1. Senators may be elected to no more than 3 terms.
   2. Representatives may be elected to no more than 5 terms.
   3. Supreme Court Justices may serve no more than 18 years.

3. No one is above the law. Elected members of all three branches of government are subject to all laws, just like any other person, even though prosecution of such a person for crimes must wait until that person leaves office. In cases where immediate prosecution might be important, impeachment is an option.

4. Senate impeachment votes are not optional. If the House impeaches someone, the Senate must immediately perform all business necessary to assure a timely vote on that impeachment; this process is not optional and may not be postponed. Once an actionable concern has been raised that a public official might have committed a crime, the public has an interest in swift resolution.

5. House and Senate impeachment votes are temporarily private. Impeachment votes by both House and Senate will be recorded and tallied privately, preferably electronically, with only the aggregate result reported immediately. Individual votes will be held securely in private for a period of ten years, at which time all such votes will be made a public part of the historical record.

6. Public office is not a refuge to wait out the clock on prosecution. Any clock for the Statute of Limitations does not run while prosecution is not an option. This applies for all elected persons for whom indictment or prosecution is locked out due to participation in public office, but in particular for POTUS. It may be necessary to the doing of orderly public business not to prosecute a President while in office, however public office is not a refuge in which someone may hide out until the clock runs out on otherwise-possible prosecutions, whether that clock began before or during time in office.

7. Pardon power is subject to conflict-of-interest (COI) restrictions. It is necessary to the credibility of all public officials in a free society that there be some reasonable belief that rules of law do not create options for corrupt officials to abuse the system. Presidents and other state and federal officials embued with the pardon power may never apply such power to themselves, their families, or any other individuals with whom there is even an appearance of conflict of interest. No such person may solicit any action by anyone on promise of a pardon. Any single such action, attempted action, or promise of action where there is a conflict of interest that is known or reaasonably should have been know to the party exercising pardon power is an impeachable offense and a felony abuse of power subject to a penalty of ten years in prison.

8. Independence of Department of Justice. The head of the Department of Justice shall be henceforth selected by a supermajority (2/3) vote of the House of Representatives, without any special input from or deference to the Executive.

   Rationale: Assure DOJ operates independently of the Executive, its mission being to fairly and impartially uphold Law, not to be a tool of partisan or rogue Presidential power.

9. Independence of the Supreme Court. Justices of the DOJ shall be henceforth selected by a supermajority (2/3) vote of the House of Representatives.

   Rationale:

   1. When SCOTUS must rule on the validity of Presidential action, a conflict of interest is created if those Justices might be appointed by that same President or even a majority party.

   2. Since the Constitution requires a supermajority to change its intent, an equivalent degree of protection is essential for choosing those will will interpret that intent. Recent history has suggested that it was easier to change the Court than to change the Constitution, with catastrophic effect decidedly unfair to the majority of citizens.

   3. A President is more than Appointer of Justices, yet that singular capability is so powerful and lasting that it often dominates election campaigns. Citizens need to be free to hire Presidents for other reasons more unique to the moment, such as good judgment; logistical, management, or negotiating skill; expertise in technical or scientific matters; or even just empathy with public issues.

3. Rights of People

1. Corporations are not people. Corporations are legal constructions, nothing more.

   Rationale: To say that they are independent people, is to give some actual people (those who own or control them) unequal, magnified, elitist, or otherwise distorted power over others. There is no place for this in a democracy that purports to speak of all people being created as equals.

   1. No Implicit Rights of Corporations. Any powers and duties of corporations must be explicitly granted to them, as coporations, whether by the Constitution or by legal statute, and henceforth must never be derived from any implication of imagined personhood.

   2. Explicitly Enumerated Rights of Corporations. Long-standing legal powers and duties of corporations such as the right to sign contracts, the right to own property, the responsibility to pay taxes, and any legal responsibility under tort law are hereby acknowledged by express enumeration in support of demonstrated corporate need and are no longer intended to be inferred as part of any preposterous fiction that corporations are just another kind of person.

   3. Non-Rights of Corporations. Alleged rights such as, but not limited to, rights of free speech and religious rights for corporations are hereby clarified to be nullified and without basis. A corporation has no automatic rights of people extending from any metaphor of being person-like. Politics is the province of individual persons, not corporations. Corporations exist for sales, subject to the rules of laws made by individuals, not vice versa.

2. Bodily autonomy right. All mentally competent people have a right to autonomy over choices of medical procedures affecting their own body.

   1. No Forced Pregnancies. From the time of conception to the time of birth, no government nor any other person may have a superseding say over a pregnant person as to any matter relating to a fetus.

      Rationale: This should already follow from the Religious Freedom Clarification, but it is too important to leave to chance. To say that any other person could make such choices would be to allow their religious freedom to infringe the religious freedoms of the pregnant person.

      Also, the term “pregnant person” is used here intentionally to include that adulthood is not a requirement of bodily autonomy. In general, any person who has not been legally ruled mentally incompetent is entitled to self-determination on matters like this. Not even a parent should have superseding control, since a parent will not have to live a lifetime with the consequences.

   2. Fetal Disposition is a Private Matter. Whether a pregnant person wishes to refer to a fetus as simply a fetus, a potential life, an unborn child, or an actual child is a personal religious choice to be made by that pregnant person. No law shall impose a policy on this.

      Rationale: To say otherwise would be to deny the obvous fact that people simply differ on this matter. To assume there were some single right way that everyone must adhere to would be to give dominance to some religious philosophies over others.

      It's a compromise, but the only one that it allows each person the best guarantee of at least some autonomy in a society where not everyone agrees and we are not likely to change that fact by fiat.

      Also, and importantly, some pregnancies are not successful and even in a society where we permit abortion for those who weren't wanting to be pregnant, it would be callous and undignified not to acknowledge the legitimate loss to others who sincerely wanted to carry a pregnancy to term but were unable. It is possible to be respectful in both situations, by feeling the grief of someone who wanted a child and not manufacturing grief for someone else who did not.

3. Right to Choose a Marital Partner. Among consenting adults, the choice to choose who to marry must not be restricted due to race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

   Rationale: This has been accepted already and it is not appropriate to roll that back. It was a good idea anyway, though, because happy families add an extra level of safety net protection to society. Family members try to take care of one another during sickness and other hard times, and this hopefully reduces some amount of stress on public safety nets.

4. Religious Freedom Clarification. The right to religious self-determination is a basic human right.

   1. Religious Choice. All people have the right to explore religous choice on their own timeline and terms. No one is required to pick any particular philosophy, or any philosophy at all, or even to make a choice.

   2. Religious Equality. Religious protections span all religious choices (and non-choices), and hence are accorded equally to all people. No person may be accorded second-class legal status on the basis of their religious philosophy—or lack thereof.

      Rationale: So atheists, agnostics, etc. are still due religious freedom protection. Answers to “Is there a God?” are still due religious protection if the answer is “no” or “I don't know” or “I haven't decided” or “I don't know what that means” or “This is not a binary question.”

   3. No State Religion. The so-called “establishment clause” of the First Amendment is hereby clarified to mean that the United States takes no position that might give the appearance of preferring one religon over another.

      Rationale: We are not, for example, a Christian nation. Nor a Jewish nation. And so on. And yet the US is a nation that intends to treat each religion and non-religion in the same supportive and respectful way, and expects each of these religions to be respectful of others. This is how balance is maintained in pluralistic society.

   4. Religion is not a Popularity Contest. The fact that one religious philosophy might at any given point be more common than another does afford that philosophy a greater or lesser status.

   5. No Bullying in the name of Religion. The freedom of religious choice is not a right to bully or coerce, nor to violate law. Each person's right of religious choice extends only to the point where it might infringe on the equivalent rights of others.

Yes, this could be done by separate amendments. But it would be a lot of them, and the discussion would be much more complex. I say do it all at once because every one of these things is absolutely needed.

If anything, there might be a few things I left out.

 

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Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This post was catalyzed by a single tweet by me on ex-Twitter, but it has been hugely elaborated since, after all, this venue does not have a 280 character limit.

The odd graphic of the scales of justice under repair was created by Abacus.AI's ChatLLM facility, using Claude Sonnet 3.5 and Dall-E and the prompt:

Draw a picture of a grayscale statue of a woman holding the scales of justice in one raised hand and a small wrench and a pair of needle-nose pliers in the other hand, lower, at her side. part of the statue should include a toolbox next to her feet that is open and presumably where she's taken the wrench from. the woman should be wearing a flowing gown, as is traditional for this kind of statue, but she should have a pair of goggles on her head, as one would use in a metal shop to protect one's eyes. The woman should have a pair of protective goggles, like one would use for metal working, over her eyes.

And, yes, I'm aware I did not get the needle-nose pliers got left out. And on this iteration I didn't ask for her to be seated, though I had been thinking of requesting she be seated at a work bench to resolve some unwanted aspects of previous attempts, so I went with this as the best of several tries.