John Davenport, a professor (of philosophy?) at Fordham University, has some proposals to fix parts of the U.S. Constitution that he says are outdated. I am 100% on board with cleaning up election finance and clarifying the speech rights of corporations. Others I hadn’t thought about as constitutional amendments, but I think all these ideas are worth considering.

• Changes to how we do elections: “rotation of early primaries among all our states, automatic runoffs on ranked-choice ballots, fair district lines, and uniform federal requirements for election integrity”
• “overturning the Citizens United precedent through an amendment that establishes voter-owned elections with public financing of campaigns, very strict limits on all private donations, and requirements for candidates in all federal races (and all cabinet appointees) to disclose ten years of tax records. The amendment should include a clear statement that corporations—whether for-profit or nonprofit —do not have the same rights to spend on “speech” as real persons. Political advertising by corporations and large PACs should be strictly limited.”
• 10-year gap between serving in Congress and working as a lobbyist, restrictions on all federal officials going to work for industry they were regulating (he doesn’t say how long), restrict access of lobbyists to federal officials, and use tax law to further limit lobbying (he doesn’t say how)
• get rid of the Senate filibuster, and allow 55% of House members to force a vote (maybe, but consensus is a worthy ideal, and you can’t have 55% of the population voting to gas the other 45%)
• 18-year term limits in the Supreme Court, which would mean exactly two appointed during each 4-year presidential term. If a justice retires or dies during their term, he suggests picking a lower federal judge by lottery to serve out the remainder of their term. Congress would also be required to vote on judicial appointments within six months (or what, they are automatically confirmed?)
• Now to limit future Presidents: clarify what constitutes an illegal campaign contribution, treason, contempt of Congress, what justifies impeachment, and require blind trusts.
• 10 year terms for the Attorney General and director of the FBI, and dismissing them requires agreement between the President and three-fifths of the House
• limits to appointing family to government positions
• naturalized citizens qualify for any office after 20 years

This all sounds pretty good. I think we have an enormous amount of inertia built into the system though because any individual or small group of politicians who support the campaign finance measures would pretty easily be ousted by those who do not. It’s like disarmament – everyone giving up the weapons all at once is the best solution for everyone, but those who can trick the rest into doing it while they hold on to theirs would then be able to blow up the others. Corporate and special interest money are the electoral weapons of mass destruction that all parties should give up simultaneously as the best outcome, but instead of arms talks we seem to be in an arms race with no end in site. We’ve had a couple relatively strong leaders make a push on this (Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders) and they’ve come up short. The “mainstream politicians” always argue that it would be nice to give up the weapons, but the other side won’t do it and we have to win before we have any chance to reform the system from within. Then they get elected, and the cycle repeats.

There is also the small matter of the U.S. Constitution being our king and god. Seriously, we don’t have a sovereign ruling by divine right, so we treat the Constitution almost as a holy text that should be changed infrequently and only with a damn good reason. And there is some advantage in this – constitutions have come and gone in almost all other countries since 1783, while the U.S. form of government has proven pretty stable. The flip side of stability is resistance to change. The system was intentionally designed that way, but maybe we have gone so long without tightening a few screws here and there to keep it from wobbling, and now big structural changes are needed to keep it from collapsing.

I would also get rid of the electoral college and the states, by the way. Or if I didn’t get rid of the states entirely, I would make it much easier to carve out new ones from bits and pieces of the old ones. State borders have zero cultural, economic, or physical significance. Their time has come and gone and they are holding us back.