THE U.S. CONSTITUTION NEEDS AMENDING – AND FAST

On 8/9/09 Alec MacGillis in the Washington Post outlined one of the largest problems today in our Constitution that distorts the legislative process and often thwarts the will of a large majority of Americans. The composition of the U.S. Senate permits several small state Senators to essentially wield excessive power. MacGillis wrote:

“The Senate Finance Committee’s “Gang of Six” that is drafting health-care legislation that may shape the final deal..…represents six states that are among the least populous in the country: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa.
Between them, those six states hold 8.4 million people — less than New Jersey — and represent 3 percent of the U.S. population…..In the House, those six states have 13 seats out of 435, 3 percent of the whole. In the Senate, those six members are crafting what may well be the blueprint for [health] reform.
Climate change legislation, which passed in the House, also faces daunting odds. Why? Because agriculture, coal and oil interests hold far more sway in the Senate. In the House, the big coal state of Wyoming has a single vote to New York’s 29 and California’s 53. In the Senate, each state has two. The two Dakotas (total population: 1.4 million) together have twice as much say in the Senate as does Florida (18.3 million) or Texas (24.3 million) or Illinois (12.9 million).”

We unfortunately need 4 new Constitutional Amendments to fix this and other affronts to our system of one-man-one-vote representative democracy and to address three other serious long-term Constitutional problems.

A 28th Amendment would change the composition of the Senate to better reflect the relative populations of the 50 states. All states with at least 1 million people but less than 10 million inhabitants would have 2 Senators. States with less than 1 million inhabitants would be allocated only 1 Senator. States will 10 to 20 million people would get 3 Senators, those with 20 to 30 million would get 4 Senators, and so forth.

Reviewing the Census numbers from 2008 and extrapolating the 2010 Census results, this new Senate allocation would still result in about 100 total U.S. Senators. 34 States (68%) would have 2 Senators each since they have between 1 and 10 million inhabitants each. Only 7 states would have 1 Senator each (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming) because they all have less than 1 million people each. 5 states would have 3 Senators each: Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio as they have between 10 and 20 million inhabitants. Texas with about 25 million people would have 4 Senators and California with around 38 million people would have 5 U.S. Senators.

There are 2 states that might change places after the 2010 Census. Michigan has been steadily losing population and is just over 10 million inhabitants. North Carolina which has been steadily gaining population is just under 10 million in habitants. This proposed U.S. Senate allocation would ensure better national representation of all Americans in this very powerful national legislative body.

An additional change to the U.S. Senate would involve the filling of vacancies. To fill a vacant seat, a new election would have to be scheduled by the State’s Governor within 3 to 6 months from the date of any vacancy. The winner would take office within a week from the certification of the election results. No more political appointments would be allowed as was proven to be a real political fiasco in several states after the 2008 elections.

Finally, all laws passed by the Senate would only require the consent of a majority, or 1 vote more than half of the total Senators elected, provided a quorum were established. The filibuster should be prohibited. This would not change the two-thirds majority votes required for judicial appointments, treaty ratifications, or other specific matters listed in the Constitution. The President of the Senate (The Vice-President) would be able to cast a vote at any time on any vote, not just when the Senate is equally divided as it stands under current law.

In addition, we should admit Puerto Rico with about 4 million U.S. Citizens as a state and merge the 2 Dakotas (with just under 1.5 million total people) so we can still retain the magic number of 50 states. If the 2 Dakotas merged simultaneously with Puerto Rico Statehood, it would be a political wash in the Senate as the new State of Dakota would have 2 Senators (1.5 million people total) and Puerto Rico with 4 million people would also get 2 Senators. Alternatively, the residents of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico could vote for complete independence.

Washington DC should revert back to Maryland, as did part of the Federal District to Virginia during and after the Civil War. Only a small geographic area surrounding the National Mall and including most Prominent Federal Government Buildings (including the Capitol, the White House, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and most Federal Department headquarters) would be part of the Federal District for Congressional Administration. It is an affront to representational democracy that over 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia have no Congressional representation.

A 29th Amendment would increase the U.S. House of Representatives from 435 to a total of 777 members who would all serve 4-year terms, with one-half (½) of the House up for election every 2 years. It would become a continuous legislative body as is the Senate where only a third of Senators are up for election every 2 years. Each state would still have at least one Representative as provided by the Constitution. Actually any number between 500 and 1,000 would work so long as it becomes too expensive to bribe enough Members of Congress to influence important legislation.

Of all modern democracies, the U.S. has the most people allocated per federal legislative district (between 525,000 and 700,000 each) compared to most other countries which have less than 250,000 people per national assembly seat. These changes would significantly reduce the perpetual campaigning and fundraising that consumes more than half the time of our U.S. Representatives who must stand for election every other year. They may also increase direct voter access to their Congressional representatives and limit the power of a few well-moneyed campaign contributors.

Another change for the U.S. House would require that all Congressional Districts be determined by a bi-partisan commission appointed by Congress after the results of each Census are announced and certified. Districts would be based upon contiguous geographic entities without regards to the demographics, politics, economics, races, creeds, colors, religions or national origins of the inhabitants. This would actually return Congressional districts to the geographic basis of the original Constitution rather than the strange-shaped gerrymandered districts we have seen for the past 30 years. There should be no safe Democratic or Republican seats that reflect extreme gerrymandered partisan groupings of voters.

A 30th Amendment would eliminate the Electoral College and have the President and Vice-President elected by direct popular vote. In this manner, all candidates would have to campaign in every state and not just “battleground” ones, because one could never tell where the winning votes might come from. No state or large groups of the electorate would be disregarded as being safely in the Blue or Red camps as occurred for all of the Presidential contests since 1996.

A 31st Amendment would define and limit “person” for all Constitutional and legal purposes to natural born human beings. It would not attempt to define the beginning or end of human life, as that would be left to each state, or to future generations through legislative enactments. This is not a proposal to address abortion, euthanasia, or marriage, which could properly be the subjects of other Amendments. Most importantly the definition of “Person” would exclude all business, social, labor, or other organizations, including corporations, partnerships, companies, LLCs, foundations, Unions and all government-created “legal fictions.” This clear definition is particularly important for defining whose speech and civil liberties are to be legally protected and who may give money to political organizations and individual campaigns. Business entities, trade organizations and other legal fictions should be protected under the 5th Amendment and other specifically enumerated and reasonably related Constitutional protections but they should not be equated with living individuals. This was a serious interpretive mistake from several past U.S. Supreme Court decisions that must be rectified to reassert the authority of people over corporations.

With the requirement that Constitutional Amendments be approved by three-quarters (75%) of the states, the chances of passage may be decent for most of these 4 proposed Amendments. 82 percent of the states would retain 2 Senators or actually gain a few Senators. All states would likely see an increase in the number of Congressional districts instead of about a third losing seats if the House remains fixed at 435 members and the 2010 Census requires reapportionment. Finally, every state would probably like to be an equal focus of future Presidential elections instead of limiting the battlegrounds to fewer than 10 states.

Alternatively we could instead just add a fourth branch of government to reflect political and economic reality. This branch would have absolute veto power over the other three (Legislative, Executive and Judiciary). It would consist of permanent appointed representatives of all major U.S. corporations (including multinationals) that have at least $1 billion in total annual revenues as per their most recently filed federal tax returns. The make-up of this group would change a bit from year to year but essentially it is a pretty solid club. That way the rest of the government would not depend upon campaign contributions from this group of wealthy corporations, but they would face the normal reality of being wholly subservient to them. Full transparency and honesty would finally be achieved – even if the reality would not be so pleasant. The proposed 4 Amendment discussed above would go a long way towards reversing the ongoing surreptitious takeover of our country by large business interests.

As always, I welcome reader comments. – 8/11/09 by Marc Pascal in Phoenix, AZ.