US Constitutional Amendments I'd propose

[ZOmegaZ]

Elections! Paper ballots, equal access, term limits, approval voting, gerrymandering, recall elections, campaign finance...


18) All votes cast in elections for offices federal, state, or local, shall be recorded in a written, durable form readable by a healthy human without mechanical assistance. This record shall be presented to the voter for verification before the vote is cast, whereupon that voter shall have the option to recast their vote. The federal government shall define standards for this process, and fund the acquisition of necessary equipment.

19) Ballots shall not indicate the party affiliation of any candidate.

20) In the event that voters are presented with a ballot listing the names of candidates, the order of those names shall be randomized on each ballot.

21) In no case shall the signatures of more than 100 registered voters be required for a candidate to be listed on the ballot for any election, nor shall fees be charged for such listing.

22a) The President shall be elected by popular vote. The electoral college is nullified.

22b) The electoral votes of each state shall be distributed proportionally to each candidate according to the popular vote within that state.

23a) No person shall hold the office of Senator more than twice, or of Representative more than six times.

23b) States shall have the right to set term limits for their Representatives or Senators.

23c) No person shall hold the office of Senator, Representative, or President twice in succession, but may otherwise serve as many times as elected.

24) All electoral districts shall be drawn by a politically-neutral group of at least five people, none of whom are elected officials. This body shall be politically neutral. The states shall have the power to define the selection process for this group.

25) States shall have the right to determine whether to use single-member or multi-member House districts, so long as each voter's weight is approximately equal.

26) States shall have the right to hold recall elections for their Representatives or Senators, and to determine processes to fill vacancies between elections.

27a) Congress shall have the power to regulate donations and spending on federal election campaigns. The states shall have such power over election campaigns for all other offices.

27b) All elections shall be publicly funded; spending private money on an election, unless that money is equally shared among all candidates for that office, shall be forbidden by law.

28) All public elections at any level of government shall be held using approval voting.

[SMJB]

How about something where if I'm suing the government and it pulls the "National Security" or whatever card to sidestep it, the Supreme Court then has to rule about whether or not it is an issue of national security?

Reinstate the Voters' Rights Act.

Something governing how congressional districts are drawn. I don't know what, though.

(Somehow didn't see that there were multiple pages--be back in a minute).

[Simon_Jester]

15) Weapons which convey the ability to kill large numbers of people rapidly are subject to regulation or ban by federal or state governments.

The definition of "large" and "rapidly" are going to need work. Does a semiautomatic pistol have this ability? A bolt-action rifle?

Right. Going for "general" in this case, leaving the specifics up to the courts and legislatures of individual time and places.

The problem is that you're inviting a massive debate over legal minutiae by introducing the vague phrase "ability to kill large numbers" and then not defining your term. When you go for general rules in legislation, you must make sure that your rules ARE general- that they can be implemented in practice, in the majority of applicable cases, without someone having to obsess over the nitpicking details.

This is why something like "Congress shall make no law... respecting an establishment of religion" is so powerful. It lays down a very fundamental right, but at the same time its core meaning and significance are not in dispute. Sometimes it can't be enforced without debating the minutiae, but you don't have to refight the battle over the minutiae every time you want to discuss the law.

A law on gun bans that applies only to "guns that kill lots of people" does NOT pass this test.

20) In the event that voters are presented with a ballot listing the names of candidates, the order of those names shall be randomized on each ballot.

This may actually increase the rate of accidentally voting for the wrong person, especially if the names of the popular candidates are randomly slipped in among numerous bit candidates.

21) In no case shall the signatures of more than 100 registered voters be required for a candidate to be listed on the ballot for any election, nor shall fees be charged for such listing.

This results in staggering numbers of candidates for things like the presidency, where you get placed on the ballot statewide. It's easy to find 100 kooks in an entire state. This may actually decrease third party voting, because aside from the two or three big national names, everyone else on the ballot is a random person you've never heard of before, indistinguishable from every unwashed moron who got 100 kooks to sign a petition.

22a) The President shall be elected by popular vote. The electoral college is nullified.

22b) The electoral votes of each state shall be distributed proportionally to each candidate according to the popular vote within that state.

...Which of these do you actually want? By the way, if you negate the electoral college entirely, you are faced with the reality that we may have to do a nationwide recount if the vote tallies come close enough. And they might.

[Groan]

One advantage of electoral districts is that they allow us to compartmentalize and say "this district is unquestionably backing X, this one is backing Y, and we're not sure about Z," and thus do an agonizing recount of votes ONLY in Z.

23a) No person shall hold the office of Senator more than twice, or of Representative more than six times.

23b) States shall have the right to set term limits for their Representatives or Senators.

23c) No person shall hold the office of Senator, Representative, or President twice in succession, but may otherwise serve as many times as elected.

In recent experience, it's actually the NEW firebrand congressmen who are the problem. Term limits are a red herring; they were never really the problem.

Also, 23b will predictably be gamed by state legislatures to remove opposite-party senators, who are frequently longstanding political figures in the state who are holdovers from a time when the political balance was different, and who remain in office thanks to their personal respect and popularity among an opposite-party electorate. Removing that is probably bad.

24) All electoral districts shall be drawn by a politically-neutral group of at least five people, none of whom are elected officials. This body shall be politically neutral. The states shall have the power to define the selection process for this group.

Much better to have a simple geometric algorithm for this purpose.

[Lonestar]

15) Weapons which convey the ability to kill large numbers of people rapidly are subject to regulation or ban by federal or state governments.

Why?

16) Weapons which are useful for purposes including (but not limited to) sport and self-defense, but are not useful for killing large numbers of people quickly, are subject to regulation by state and federal governments. However, their ownership shall not be barred to any adult person except for conviction of a felony or declaration of mental incompetence by a court of law. Regulation may include limits on the manner and locations allowable for carrying and storing such weapons, so long as such regulations do not interfere with the right of ownership and legitimate use.

Are you unaware that the best firearms that are useful for self defense are also capable for killing large numbers of people? The worst mass shooting in US history happened during a Federal ban on mags with more than 10 rounds, for example mag limits wouldn't help a whole lot in that situation.

The Sandy Hook shooter used a AR-platform rifle, but really, his target was such he could have done the same amount of damage with a 30-30 lever action(THE "sporting use" rifle), or a bolt-action milsurp with a bayonet. The Washington Navy Yard shooter used a pump-action shotgun, something you can get even in what we think of as a "no-guns" country like the UK. Pump action shotguns(the Remington 870 and Mossberg 500 platforms) are probably the most common sporting guns in existence.

I'd add that many sportsmen in the US use non-traditional "sporting" guns in sporting roles, ARs for Hog-hunting and SKSs for cheap durr reffels.

What happens when someone climbs a clock tower and shoots a lot of people with a bolt-action?

So, congrats, you've chosen to give a blanket ability to ban every single gun in the United States from private ownership. But hey, at least you managed to piss off a group of voters who managed to vote out CO politicians despite the opposition spending 6 times as much as them in campaign funding.

[Vendetta]

The Washington Navy Yard shooter used a pump-action shotgun, something you can get even in what we think of as a "no-guns" country like the UK. Pump action shotguns(the Remington 870 and Mossberg 500 platforms) are probably the most common sporting guns in existence.

Actually you can't. Pump action shotguns have been illegal here for some time (IIRC at least the 1970s). Open breech shotguns are legal but you have to demonstrate some kind of need for you to own one (ie that you are a farmer and need one for agricultural pest control).

[Simon_Jester]

It occurs to me that one fundamental difference between Britain and the US is that Britain has been densely inhabited for much longer, to the point where there might not be a lot of land left for hunting that hasn't been hunted out or brought close to "hunted out."

Sort of like how the pre-Industrial Revolution switch toward coal burning was partly triggered by the English already having deforested much of the island to provide firewood for manufacturing.

If the only places deer or whatever are even still alive is on relatively limited nature preserves, then obviously that means there's not a lot of room for a safe, responsible hunting culture.

[Lonestar]

Actually you can't. Pump action shotguns have been illegal here for some time (IIRC at least the 1970s). Open breech shotguns are legal but you have to demonstrate some kind of need for you to own one (ie that you are a farmer and need one for agricultural pest control).

You're thinking of pump-action centrefire rifles. It appears that pump-action shotguns can be legally acquired in England. They have to be blocked at 3 rounds, but even semi-automatic shotgats are legal.

Although I suppose I could be pedantic and say "In NI, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands the sort of things that are legal in the US tend to be legal there, so I was technically right".

[Vendetta]

It occurs to me that one fundamental difference between Britain and the US is that Britain has been densely inhabited for much longer, to the point where there might not be a lot of land left for hunting that hasn't been hunted out or brought close to "hunted out."

If the only places deer or whatever are even still alive is on relatively limited nature preserves, then obviously that means there's not a lot of room for a safe, responsible hunting culture.

Hunting also happens on private land organised and managed by the landowner. Deer are really only hunted in Scotland, and most of the hunts for deer are on land owned and managed by the royal family.

Shooting in most of the UK is actually game birds. Pheasant and grouse most commonly.

[ZOmegaZ]

20) In the event that voters are presented with a ballot listing the names of candidates, the order of those names shall be randomized on each ballot.

This may actually increase the rate of accidentally voting for the wrong person, especially if the names of the popular candidates are randomly slipped in among numerous bit candidates.

It may. But there are definite ballot-order effects that unfairly advantage those higher on the ballot. I'd call that a bigger concern.

21) In no case shall the signatures of more than 100 registered voters be required for a candidate to be listed on the ballot for any election, nor shall fees be charged for such listing.

This results in staggering numbers of candidates for things like the presidency, where you get placed on the ballot statewide. It's easy to find 100 kooks in an entire state. This may actually decrease third party voting, because aside from the two or three big national names, everyone else on the ballot is a random person you've never heard of before, indistinguishable from every unwashed moron who got 100 kooks to sign a petition.

Tennessee's criterion is 25 signatures, and we had something like twelve candidates last time around, I think. Of course, that's in the absence of any reforms making it actually possible to have an effect on the outcome of the election.

22a) The President shall be elected by popular vote. The electoral college is nullified.

22b) The electoral votes of each state shall be distributed proportionally to each candidate according to the popular vote within that state.

...Which of these do you actually want? By the way, if you negate the electoral college entirely, you are faced with the reality that we may have to do a nationwide recount if the vote tallies come close enough. And they might.

I'd tend to favor nullifying the electoral college and using approval voting. Doing the first without the second would be much less helpful. The electoral college is not the problem, but neither is it at all helpful.

23a) No person shall hold the office of Senator more than twice, or of Representative more than six times.

23b) States shall have the right to set term limits for their Representatives or Senators.

23c) No person shall hold the office of Senator, Representative, or President twice in succession, but may otherwise serve as many times as elected.

In recent experience, it's actually the NEW firebrand congressmen who are the problem. Term limits are a red herring; they were never really the problem.

I fully agree. I personally like 23c, but I threw the others in there because, hey, discussion good.

Also, 23b will predictably be gamed by state legislatures to remove opposite-party senators, who are frequently longstanding political figures in the state who are holdovers from a time when the political balance was different, and who remain in office thanks to their personal respect and popularity among an opposite-party electorate. Removing that is probably bad.

That's a very good point. 23b is terrible.

24) All electoral districts shall be drawn by a politically-neutral group of at least five people, none of whom are elected officials. This body shall be politically neutral. The states shall have the power to define the selection process for this group.

Much better to have a simple geometric algorithm for this purpose.

[/quote]

I'd be in favor of that if such a thing could be easily and universally defined.

[Simon_Jester]

It may. But there are definite ballot-order effects that unfairly advantage those higher on the ballot. I'd call that a bigger concern.

So specify reverse order- candidates are on the ballot in descending order from least populr to most popular.

Although honestly, I don't think this makes a good constitutional amendment because it's not a clear abuse of government power to put popular candidates at the top of a ballot.

Tennessee's criterion is 25 signatures, and we had something like twelve candidates last time around, I think. Of course, that's in the absence of any reforms making it actually possible to have an effect on the outcome of the election.

A party that can't muster more than a few hundred signatures in a whole state shouldn't influence the outcome of the election.

I'd tend to favor nullifying the electoral college and using approval voting. Doing the first without the second would be much less helpful. The electoral college is not the problem, but neither is it at all helpful.

I pity the first people who have to do a nationwide vote recount...

I'd be in favor of that if such a thing could be easily and universally defined.

Easy. All voting districts must be rectangles, triangles, or terminate in a jurisdictional boundary such as a state border or county line.

[Lord Insanity]

22a) The President shall be elected by popular vote. The electoral college is nullified.

22b) The electoral votes of each state shall be distributed proportionally to each candidate according to the popular vote within that state.

The Electoral College works exactly like it is supposed to. Here is an excerpt from the article Math Against Tyranny published in the November 1996 issue of Discover magazine. (Republished in 2004)

The more Natapoff looked into the nitty-gritty of real elections, the more parallels he found with another American institution that stirs up wild passions in the populace. The same logic that governs our electoral system, he saw, also applies to many sports--which Americans do, intuitively, understand. In baseball’s World Series, for example, the team that scores the most runs overall is like a candidate who gets the most votes. But to become champion, that team must win the most games. In 1960, during a World Series as nail-bitingly close as that year’s presidential battle between Kennedy and Nixon, the New York Yankees, with the awesome slugging combination of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Bill "Moose" Skowron, scored more than twice as many total runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55 to 27. Yet the Yankees lost the series, four games to three. Even Natapoff, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, conceded that Pittsburgh deserved to win. "Nobody walked away saying it was unfair," he says.

Runs must be grouped in a way that wins games, just as popular votes must be grouped in a way that wins states. The Yankees won three blowouts (16-3, 10-0, 12-0), but they couldn’t come up with the runs they needed in the other four games, which were close. "And that’s exactly how Cleveland lost the series of 1888," Natapoff continues. "Grover Cleveland. He lost the five largest states by a close margin, though he carried Texas, which was a thinly populated state then, by a large margin. So he scored more runs, but he lost the five biggies." And that was fair, too. In sports, we accept that a true champion should be more consistent than the 1960 Yankees. A champion should be able to win at least some of the tough, close contests by every means available--bunting, stealing, brilliant pitching, dazzling plays in the field--and not just smack home runs against second-best pitchers. A presidential candidate worthy of office, by the same logic, should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters.

"Experts, scholars, deep thinkers could make errors on electoral reform," Natapoff decided, "but nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle."

[Thanas]

That is a stupid analogy which makes no sense whatsoever (also Gerrymandering).

[Lord Insanity]

Just so we are on the same page here, the purpose of the Electoral College is a check against the tyranny of the majority. It is supposed to give minority view points greater power.

If you read the linked article in its entirety he provides the numbers to back up the analogy above. The Bottom line being...

Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts--such as states--than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.

He also addresses Gerrymandering.

Ideally, too, no bloc should dominate any district. This consideration, by itself, probably makes the 50 states a grid that’s closer to ideal for electoral voting than, say, the 435 congressional districts. For example, in heavily black districts, no single white or black person’s vote would be likely to change the outcome, if blacks in that district tend to vote as a bloc. Each of those voters, black and white, would have more national power in a districting scheme more closely balanced between black and white. For this reason, Natapoff says, gerrymandering can be counterproductive even when undertaken with the intention of boosting some national minority’s power. The gerrymandered district might guarantee one seat in Congress to this minority, but those voters might actually wield more national bargaining power with no seat in Congress if representatives from, say, three separate districts viewed their votes as potentially swinging an election. Anyway, Natapoff says, the point of districting is to reduce the death grip of blocs on the outcome. "This is a nonpartisan proposition," he says. "The idea is to be sure all votes in a district have power." Ideally no single party, race, ethnic group, or other bloc, nationally large or nationally small, will dominate any of the districts-- which for now happen to be the 50 states plus Washington, D.C.

P.S. I do not currently have internet access at home so it might be a few days or so till I can reply if necessary.

[ZOmegaZ]

A number of these have already been held as law by courts. 29 is a structural change, an attempt to prevent unconstitutional laws from ever being passed, and reduce the wait time for an appropriate challenger with standing to be found. 30 is the similar. 31 attempts to rein in the NSA. 32 prevents the courts from holding people in contempt for refusing to decrypt their own files. 33 is about the police attaching GPS trackers to peoples' cars without a warrant. 34-36 are self-explanatory.

29) The courts may rule on the constitutionality of bills before Congress prior to their adoption as law, or on any new bill passed into law.

30) A US citizen has the right to challenge the constitutionality of any law in court. Fees may be charged to file a constitutional challenge, but these fees shall not exceed the median weekly wage of the United States.

31) The right of individuals to be secure in their person, things, and effects, as well as the right of individuals to be secure against unwarranted search and seizure, shall extend to items and information held for that individual by a third party. These rights shall also extend to communication by that individual with whatever party, and information that such communication took place.

32) The right of a person to not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony shall include the right to refuse to assist the state in accessing private possessions or information.

33) Any modification of a person's private possessions without warrant shall be interpreted as a violation of that person's right to security in said possessions, and shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

34) All public actions taken by any law enforcement officer are subject to recording by the public. Such recordings shall be treated as the private property of the owner. Willful destruction of such records by anyone not their rightful owner shall be treated the same as destruction of any other private property.

35) No person shall be tortured, either as punishment or to elicit testimony, or for any other reason. Torture or conspiracy to commit torture by any person in the United States, or in the service thereof, shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

36) No person shall, in any case, be imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.

[ZOmegaZ]

To clarify the purpose of my gun control proposals, let me make this clear: I have no illusion that anything I've proposed will actually have any effect on the murder rate in the US. Mass shootings are a trivial problem by comparison to... oh, let's just say every other manner of death in the US. There are more suicides than murders here, of any kind! And there are so many guns in the US already that almost no imaginable law would actually reduce gun violence.

I'm more interested in clarification. Right now, we have a very vague "right to bear arms". The details of that right have actually been defined by courts, which are unaccountable to the people and can change their minds at any time. That's a bad way of doing business. My proposals have terms that, yes, still have to be defined, but they're much more specific than what we have now, and yet still general enough to function over the indefinite future.

Gun control right now is this absurd debate, and I want to narrow the field of it. Trivial weapons can't be outlawed. Weapons of mass destruction should be outlawed. Weapons in between are subject to limited regulation. Guns, lasers, grenades, nukes, mustard gas, move the lines as appropriate for your time and context.

[ZOmegaZ]

It may. But there are definite ballot-order effects that unfairly advantage those higher on the ballot. I'd call that a bigger concern.

So specify reverse order- candidates are on the ballot in descending order from least populr to most popular.

Although honestly, I don't think this makes a good constitutional amendment because it's not a clear abuse of government power to put popular candidates at the top of a ballot.

So the government has to determine who's most popular, to figure out the ballot order? How? By holding an election?

And I'd say it is a government abuse of power. Right now in Tennessee, the majority party in the general assembly gets first billing on the ballot. The people in power are giving themselves an electoral advantage.

I'd tend to favor nullifying the electoral college and using approval voting. Doing the first without the second would be much less helpful. The electoral college is not the problem, but neither is it at all helpful.

I pity the first people who have to do a nationwide vote recount...

If the alternative is to effectively disenfranchise the majority of voters in the country, I'll take the (very) occasional painful recount.

I'd be in favor of that if such a thing could be easily and universally defined.

Easy. All voting districts must be rectangles, triangles, or terminate in a jurisdictional boundary such as a state border or county line.

For what it's worth, independent districting agencies work just fine in many locations.

[Simon_Jester]

29) The courts may rule on the constitutionality of bills before Congress prior to their adoption as law, or on any new bill passed into law.

Would it not be more sensible to create a dedicated advisory court responsible for this? Perhaps one whose resolutions are not binding, but which the Supreme Court is likely to consider in its own rulings, should the law be passed?

The problem is that it's often hard to assess the constitutionality of a law when it hasn't effected anyone yet. One of the key principles of a responsible court system is that the courts can only address cases where an actual wrong has been committed, not just cases where a hypothetical wrong might one day be committed if certain other conditions are met.

30) A US citizen has the right to challenge the constitutionality of any law in court. Fees may be charged to file a constitutional challenge, but these fees shall not exceed the median weekly wage of the United States.

Who handles all the crackpots raising spurious constitutionality suits? What happens if the constitutionality of a law is challenged by someone who lacks standing to do so because they are not affected by that law? What happens if the same law is challenged repeatedly on the same grounds by different citizens?

31) The right of individuals to be secure in their person, things, and effects, as well as the right of individuals to be secure against unwarranted search and seizure, shall extend to items and information held for that individual by a third party. These rights shall also extend to communication by that individual with whatever party, and information that such communication took place.

Does this extend to the routine financial records of a business? Does MY right to privacy mean the IRS can't investigate a business which did business with me, given that the IRS would need to know that I traded with the business as part of its audit process?

32) The right of a person to not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony shall include the right to refuse to assist the state in accessing private possessions or information.

Does this mean you're allowed to refuse to open your door when the police come to your house with a warrant? If you refuse, are the police allowed to break your door down, as they are today?

If so, then this proposed amendment is meaningless and serves only to give twitchy idiots an excuse to get into angry confrontations with the police. If not, then this proposed amendment means that it's basically impossible to execute a warrant without the consent of the person being investigated... which means warrants become meaningless and criminal investigation becomes practically impossible.

33) Any modification of a person's private possessions without warrant shall be interpreted as a violation of that person's right to security in said possessions, and shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

Given how insanely overbroad "any modification of a person's private possessions" is, that runs into a LOT of problems. For example, what about the police towing your car because it's in a place it shouldn't be? What about you leaving belongings in a public place, and the police moving them, either out of benevolence or out of a fear that they are some kind of bomb or dead-drop of illicit contraband?

36) No person shall, in any case, be imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.

Imagine a person who steadfastly refuses to pay debts- what is the ultimate legal recourse the state, or a private party, has in such a case? What recourse does the state or a private party have in a case like this?

[Lonestar]

A debt is ultimately a obligation. So what should the state do for deadbeat parental units who don't pay child support?

[ZOmegaZ]

A debt is ultimately a obligation. So what should the state do for deadbeat parental units who don't pay child support?

Failure to pay a debt can result in money/assets being taken. But failure to pay a debt because you just don't have it? What sense does a jail sentence make in those circumstances?

[ZOmegaZ]

29) The courts may rule on the constitutionality of bills before Congress prior to their adoption as law, or on any new bill passed into law.

Would it not be more sensible to create a dedicated advisory court responsible for this? Perhaps one whose resolutions are not binding, but which the Supreme Court is likely to consider in its own rulings, should the law be passed?

Sounds like a reasonable approach.

The problem is that it's often hard to assess the constitutionality of a law when it hasn't effected anyone yet. One of the key principles of a responsible court system is that the courts can only address cases where an actual wrong has been committed, not just cases where a hypothetical wrong might one day be committed if certain other conditions are met.

Sure, it's difficult. But I wouldn't say that standing requirements as they're presently implemented in the US are necessarily the only way to have a responsible court system. (In fact, I'm saying they're not.) If wrong is imminent and unavoidable, preventing that wrong would also be a good thing for the courts to do.

30) A US citizen has the right to challenge the constitutionality of any law in court. Fees may be charged to file a constitutional challenge, but these fees shall not exceed the median weekly wage of the United States.

Who handles all the crackpots raising spurious constitutionality suits? What happens if the constitutionality of a law is challenged by someone who lacks standing to do so because they are not affected by that law? What happens if the same law is challenged repeatedly on the same grounds by different citizens?

The entire point of this amendment is to remove standing constraints for unconstitutional laws. The idea that someone has to be hurt by a law, directly and measurably, makes it almost impossible to challenge some unconstitutional laws. For example, nobody has standing to challenge laws violating the 27th amendment. As for the crackpots and repeated challenges, allowing fees to challenge laws should handle that.

31) The right of individuals to be secure in their person, things, and effects, as well as the right of individuals to be secure against unwarranted search and seizure, shall extend to items and information held for that individual by a third party. These rights shall also extend to communication by that individual with whatever party, and information that such communication took place.

Does this extend to the routine financial records of a business? Does MY right to privacy mean the IRS can't investigate a business which did business with me, given that the IRS would need to know that I traded with the business as part of its audit process?

It would still be possible to violate the right of a person to be secure in their effects as part of a criminal investigation. So the answer would be no, your right to privacy does not have those implications.

32) The right of a person to not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony shall include the right to refuse to assist the state in accessing private possessions or information.

Does this mean you're allowed to refuse to open your door when the police come to your house with a warrant? If you refuse, are the police allowed to break your door down, as they are today?

If so, then this proposed amendment is meaningless and serves only to give twitchy idiots an excuse to get into angry confrontations with the police.

That is the correct interpretation, but there are consequences you have not considered. Courts have tried to force people to decrypt their own data to aid in their own prosecution.

33) Any modification of a person's private possessions without warrant shall be interpreted as a violation of that person's right to security in said possessions, and shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

Given how insanely overbroad "any modification of a person's private possessions" is, that runs into a LOT of problems. For example, what about the police towing your car because it's in a place it shouldn't be? What about you leaving belongings in a public place, and the police moving them, either out of benevolence or out of a fear that they are some kind of bomb or dead-drop of illicit contraband?

Good points. My goal was to prevent the police from attaching GPS trackers to peoples' cars without warrants. Any suggestions?

36) No person shall, in any case, be imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.

Imagine a person who steadfastly refuses to pay debts- what is the ultimate legal recourse the state, or a private party, has in such a case? What recourse does the state or a private party have in a case like this?

The state can take money from such a person. Removal of possessions is valid. Fines are valid. Jail is not.

[Lonestar]

Failure to pay a debt can result in money/assets being taken. But failure to pay a debt because you just don't have it? What sense does a jail sentence make in those circumstances?

Soooo... what if the individual simply refuses to pay and hides his assets somewhere? Then what?

"Whelp, we can't find your assets, I guess you're free to go"?

[ZOmegaZ]

Failure to pay a debt can result in money/assets being taken. But failure to pay a debt because you just don't have it? What sense does a jail sentence make in those circumstances?

Soooo... what if the individual simply refuses to pay and hides his assets somewhere? Then what?

"Whelp, we can't find your assets, I guess you're free to go"?

I'm not sure how someone could be that good at hiding assets. I mean, wouldn't they have to be homeless? Either way, that's an odd argument. "You're not poor, you've just hidden your assets so well I can't even tell if they exist. To jail with you!" I mean, how would you even prove that in court?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm more interested in clarification. Right now, we have a very vague "right to bear arms". The details of that right have actually been defined by courts, which are unaccountable to the people and can change their minds at any time. That's a bad way of doing business. My proposals have terms that, yes, still have to be defined, but they're much more specific than what we have now, and yet still general enough to function over the indefinite future.

Gun control right now is this absurd debate, and I want to narrow the field of it. Trivial weapons can't be outlawed. Weapons of mass destruction should be outlawed. Weapons in between are subject to limited regulation. Guns, lasers, grenades, nukes, mustard gas, move the lines as appropriate for your time and context.

That is exactly what we do today. The reason it's a major political issue in America is because of a political deadlock between two factions.*

One faction sees the right to possess weapons as an essential mark of citizenship, thinking that if I cannot be trusted with a weapon, I am not truly 'free.'

The other faction is at best vaguely hostile towards the idea of an armed citizenry, feels safer with an unarmed citizenry, and is indifferent to the gun owners' protests of inconvenience, expense, or fear of confiscation associated with tighter gun controls.

Your amendments make you the enemy of the first faction, and will do nothing to abate the behavior of the second faction, therefore they are useless.

*These factions don't make up all Americans, there's a large middle ground, but it's the existence and behavior of these two groups that makes a major issue out of this.

Although honestly, I don't think this makes a good constitutional amendment because it's not a clear abuse of government power to put popular candidates at the top of a ballot.

So the government has to determine who's most popular, to figure out the ballot order? How? By holding an election?

Easy. Hold a preliminary survey. Allow people to choose the 1-3 candidates they most want to win, informally. Whoever gets the most checkmarks on the survey is on top of the ballot, whoever gets the second most is second place, and so on.

Or there are countless other ways to do it. It's not like states have any difficulty determining which candidates should go on the ballot in the first place, assuming that they act in good faith.

And I'd say it is a government abuse of power. Right now in Tennessee, the majority party in the general assembly gets first billing on the ballot. The people in power are giving themselves an electoral advantage.

So mandate that ballot order be done in a nonpartisan way, without prejudice to which of many nonpartisan methods is used.

I pity the first people who have to do a nationwide vote recount...

If the alternative is to effectively disenfranchise the majority of voters in the country, I'll take the (very) occasional painful recount.

By the way, you never addressed the person who pointed out that individual voters' influence is increased in a district-by-district election, compared to an election that samples a huge pool of 100 million people and treats them all identically.

I'd be in favor of that if such a thing could be easily and universally defined.

Easy. All voting districts must be rectangles, triangles, or terminate in a jurisdictional boundary such as a state border or county line.

For what it's worth, independent districting agencies work just fine in many locations.[/quote]They are welcome to continue to do so- drawing only rectangles, triangles, or shapes terminating on a jurisdictional boundary.

---

Sure, it's difficult. But I wouldn't say that standing requirements as they're presently implemented in the US are necessarily the only way to have a responsible court system. (In fact, I'm saying they're not.) If wrong is imminent and unavoidable, preventing that wrong would also be a good thing for the courts to do.

You can say so, but there are real problems and questions that arise when you try to implement this.

Now, the court system does have a mechanism for "injunctions" that are issued to forbid someone from doing something- usually so that no irreparable harm results from a situation while the courts figure out what to do about it. But on the whole, it is not the business of the courts, either in the US or in most other developed countries, to preemptively provide 'justice' for a wrong that is only allegedly going to ever happen. That sets some bad precedents along with the good ones.

Of course, we can resolve this by, say, creating a separate panel of senior jurists whose job is specifically to rule on questions of law: "Is it constitutional for us to do this, given that we haven't done it yet?" And to create some incentive for the legislature to consult these jurists on topics that raise constitutional questions.

But I'm not in favor of resolving it by extending the standard constitutionality-challenge format, because the entire point of challenging constitutionality in that format is that some specific person has suffered a tangible harm and is seeking redress.

If we want rulings on the constitutionality of the law itself, we must set up a court system designed to do that.

For example, nobody has standing to challenge laws violating the 27th amendment.

What legal support do you have for this statement?

As for the crackpots and repeated challenges, allowing fees to challenge laws should handle that.

One might hope so, but from the sound of it the fees won't be large enough to deter a determined set of cranks. If one thousand birthers ALL want to challenge the constitutionality of having a secret Muslim as president of the United States or whatever, how do we keep that from becoming a burden on the federal courts?

We need some way to dismiss such suits out of hand- but doing so greatly undermines your goal of making the system highly accessible.

Come to think of it... do we have that much of a problem with a backlog of constitutionality cases that the existing courts aren't handling properly?

It would still be possible to violate the right of a person to be secure in their effects as part of a criminal investigation. So the answer would be no, your right to privacy does not have those implications.

If your goal is to ban mass wiretapping alone, you should rewrite the amendment as something like:

31-prime) The right of individuals to be secure in their effects against unreasonable search and seizure, shall extend to items and information held for that individual by a third party, to communication by that individual with whatever party, and to information that such communication took place. The federal government shall not authorize or perform any indiscriminate search of such information or communications, without a warrant issued by an open court, as described under the Fourth Amendment.

That makes it more explicit what you're talking about, and helps nail down the conditions under which the federal government is or is not allowed to engage in surveillance.

32) The right of a person to not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony shall include the right to refuse to assist the state in accessing private possessions or information.

Does this mean you're allowed to refuse to open your door when the police come to your house with a warrant? If you refuse, are the police allowed to break your door down, as they are today?

If so, then this proposed amendment is meaningless and serves only to give twitchy idiots an excuse to get into angry confrontations with the police.

That is the correct interpretation, but there are consequences you have not considered. Courts have tried to force people to decrypt their own data to aid in their own prosecution.

...Wait, WHICH interpretation is correct? I've listed two.

Here's the core of the problem: citizens actually don't have a right to hide things from the court system, when the court has requested them as evidence in a case, or the object of a search warrant. I would argue that they shouldn't have that right, either.

The accused's protection from self-incrimination is limited. They cannot be compelled to testify under penalty of perjury that they committed the crime, but they can in fact be compelled to offer up evidence relevant to the case, such as their financial records, such as physical items they are alleged to have used in commission of a crime, and so on.

If you remove this principle, then there are huge categories of crime that become almost impossible to investigate, because all the accused has to do is shout "I don't wanna!" and refuse to let the police enter his home, and no one can determine whether or not he's holding a kidnapped twelve-year-old on the premises or whatever.

Putting locks or encryption on your property to secure it from thieves or private citizens, or even government agents searching your belongings for unlawful purposes is reasonable. But if, in the legitimate execution of their duties as officers of the judicial system, the police or the courts need you to unlock a container on your property, or decrypt a file, they have reasonable grounds to expect you to comply.

"I wrote this letter in rot13" does not reasonably confer on you the right to say "therefore the courts will never be allowed to know the contents of this letter, they can't make me tell them!"

[and sure, rot13 is an incredibly weak encryption scheme, but it's the principle of the thing that matters. If having strong encryption gives you standing to ignore the courts, then surely people with access only to weaker encryption have the same right]

33) Any modification of a person's private possessions without warrant shall be interpreted as a violation of that person's right to security in said possessions, and shall be a criminal act, punishable by law.

Given how insanely overbroad "any modification of a person's private possessions" is, that runs into a LOT of problems. For example, what about the police towing your car because it's in a place it shouldn't be? What about you leaving belongings in a public place, and the police moving them, either out of benevolence or out of a fear that they are some kind of bomb or dead-drop of illicit contraband?

Good points. My goal was to prevent the police from attaching GPS trackers to peoples' cars without warrants. Any suggestions?

In that case, you should specifically address the use of electronic devices to track or monitor people's words or deeds.

Part of the problem here is that the police are in fact allowed to follow you around without a warrant. The government's argument for why they should be allowed to use tracking bugs on your car is that they already have the right to do this, and all the tracking bug does is automate a process that would otherwise require a couple of officers sitting around drinking coffee in a squad car on stakeout all day.

36) No person shall, in any case, be imprisoned for failure to pay a debt.

Imagine a person who steadfastly refuses to pay debts- what is the ultimate legal recourse the state, or a private party, has in such a case? What recourse does the state or a private party have in a case like this?

The state can take money from such a person. Removal of possessions is valid. Fines are valid. Jail is not.

I'm asking you to tell me, precisely what does the state do if the person who owes the money refuses to comply? How do they go about evicting someone from a house?

Also, what does the state do if the debtor is unable to pay? Do they just shrug and walk off? Garnish wages? What?

[Lonestar]

I'm not sure how someone could be that good at hiding assets. I mean, wouldn't they have to be homeless? Either way, that's an odd argument. "You're not poor, you've just hidden your assets so well I can't even tell if they exist. To jail with you!" I mean, how would you even prove that in court?

The same way they nailed Al Capone for tax evasion. If anything it would be easier today thanks to the proliferation of social media.

[Thanas]

Just so we are on the same page here, the purpose of the Electoral College is a check against the tyranny of the majority. It is supposed to give minority view points greater power.

But that is not a fair outcome. It values some votes over others. That is the problem he is trying to correct. You can't claim that the system is fair if one vote is favored more than the other.