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Unratified Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
- rukittenme 9y agoI found this article very interesting. I had no idea that Madison proposed 12 amendments (10 of which were the bill of rights and 1 of which was accepted in 1989). The 'lost' 12th amendment which "provided a formula for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives" has very much been on my mind. Ironically, it gave me some comfort to know that the issue was as politically impossible to pass then as it is now. It gives me hope that it could be passed knowing that opinion, not a cabal of interests, stands in the way.
- philwelch 9y agoThe hilarious part about the apportionment amendment is that there's nothing stopping it from being passed into law if enough state legislatures ratify it. Sure, it's extremely improbable, but if it happened, it would be extremely disruptive. We wouldn't even be able to physically fit the House of Representatives in the chamber anymore.
- ditterdun 9y agoI don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. 435 seems really arbitrary and worse that it was put into law by the same people that yield more power by limiting the number of their peers. It's really something that should be constitutional. Most bills are drafted in committee anyway, I'm not sure everyone needs to be sitting in the same room in 2018. More representatives would also mean more local involvement, e.g. your city might actually have their own federal representative. Also the campaigning would be less intense since you have less to gain for your dollar.
- rukittenme 9y agoI think the Senate is the major bottleneck. No matter the number of representatives you just have to bribe 50 senators.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoI’m surprised by how little money it takes to buy senators.
- dfee 9y agoIn your experience, what was the price you had to pay to buy a majority?
- Anon1096 9y agoThe whole concept of "buying" a politician isn't a very truthful way to frame what happens anyway. No politician votes in a way they weren't biased towards already just due to campaign contributions.
- philwelch 9y agoIndeed; people and organizations just contribute to the campaigns of people who already happen to support the policies that benefit them. Sometimes there's a sense of reciprocity, and sometimes there's small-scale corruption (e.g. Corporation X donates money to the campaign of Mr. Congressman, who in turn votes for an appropriations bill where the Pentagon orders 10 million units from Corporation X), but it doesn't seem to influence individual opinions on broad-scale policy. It's not as often that people get elected on an animal rights platform and then start taking money from Big Fur and turn around and vote for clubbing baby seals or something like that. Big Fur just saves their money and donates to the pro-seal-clubbing candidate in the first place.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoIt's less to do with the fact that they're accepting money from causes they are sympathetic toward and more related to the fact that they are now under an obligation to continue supporting the causes they've received money from or stop receiving donations, against the wishes of their constituents. See, for example, the tax bill of 2017.
- philwelch 9y agoIt would definitely be an improvement. It also makes gerrymandering super hard. It's just a huge change that could happen at any time and completely throw off the government.
- blorsh 9y agoThe only real solution to gerrymandering is to use a minimally-complicated algorithm. The algorithm need not actually determine the districts. It can instead simply rate proposals, allowing a contest to be held. The highest scoring proposal submitted at least 400 days prior to the election is the winner, with earlier submissions winning any ties. Another improvement would be to let districts spill over state borders. One could exempt Alaska and Hawaii of course.
- Feniks 9y agoOr you could just do away with it all and go for a one man one vote system. Why a vote in Kansas needs to be tallied differently from a vote in New York in the 2020 elections is beyond me.
- rukittenme 9y agoBecause presidential elections are not popular elections. Kansas has proportional representation in the House but is absurdly over-represented in the Senate and slightly over-represented in the Presidency. This is of course by design. The founder's obviously knew about proportional representation and they deliberately chose to disregard it. Shouldn't that give you pause to figure out why?
- dbcurtis 9y agoIndeed. With our current system, rural voices are at least marginally relevant. With a purely proportional system, rural voices would not even be heard.
- mikeash 9y agoThe major reason is that smaller states wouldn't have joined any proposed Union that made them irrelevant, so the founders had to have things like the Senate to get them to join at all. This is, of course, no longer relevant.
- rgbrenner 9y agoOn that last part, they can just remove one of the tables in the middle of the chamber...
- philwelch 9y agoI think the actual number I saw was either thousands or tens of thousands, at which point you start having to worry about the fire code.
- rgbrenner 9y agothanks, I was thinking of the dc amendment.. not the apportionment amendment. Obviously removing a couple of tables wouldn't make enough room for thousands of additional people
- spc476 9y agoWith the current US population, one Representative per 30,000 people, we would have nearly 11,000 Representatives. I think it'll take more than just removing a few tables to fit that number ...
- harrisjt 9y agoDidn't some student get an emendment ratified this way to impress his professor. I remember reading he had to spam contact tons of senators.
- cperciva 9y agoYou're thinking of the 27th amendment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_...
- SubiculumCode 9y agoAt one time that number adequately represented the number of citizens in the nation, but now the ratio is bizarrely high, where it becomes incredibly unlikely that I will ever casually meet my representative at the local coffee house. I do not care if it seems ridiculous to house more than 435 in a building..Build a small stadium...I want to be represented.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoOh yes. The parent certainly should be down voted, because down with representation, down with democracy right? No well, please reconsider..
- EddieRingle 9y ago> We wouldn't even be able to physically fit the House of Representatives in the chamber anymore. I personally think it would be interesting to have more federal districts scattered throughout the US than just D.C., and representatives would adjourn at the nearest one. In the age of the Internet and video conferencing it seems like a neat idea. (Tangentially related, but on the matter of residents of D.C. not having a voting member in Congress: I don't think you should be able to take up residency in D.C. in the first place.)
- tensor_rank_0 9y ago> It gives me hope that it could be passed knowing that opinion, not a cabal of interests, stands in the way. as I've become more open to other people's political worldviews, I've come to understand that any extant political 'movement' (for lack of a better term) has advocates (and opposition) in both categories you mention: interested beneficiaries and prescriptive advocates.
- icebraining 9y agoOr as economists have dubbed it, "Bootleggers and Baptists": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
- arh68 9y agoIf you want to read more about that one, there's a website [0] that has a lot of data, graphs. It looks like the 90s but it checks out. [0] http://www.thirty-thousand.org/ http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
- filchermcurr 9y agoWhat happens if the slavery one gets ratified? Does it invalidate the 13th? Does the 13th invalidate it? Does it become a constitutional crisis and we duke it out to figure out which one wins?
- tptacek 9y agoThis is approximately as interesting a question as "what would happen if a new amendment authorizing slavery passed Congress and was ratified by three quarters of the states?"
- exolymph 9y agoYou don't think that's an interesting hypothetical? Do you think interest implies endorsement?
- tdhoot 9y agoThe later amendment always wins. See, for example, the 18th amendment which was later repealed by the 21st amendment.
- baddox 9y agoI believe you that the later amendment would win, although that’s not necessarily evident from the example of the 21st amendment, since its text explicitly repeals the 18th amendment and thus doesn’t leave the ambiguity of two contradictory texts in place. A better example might be the 17th amendment, which changes the way that US senators are elected as described in Article I.
- astura 9y agoI wouldn't use that as an example, the wording of the 21st amendment is "The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed," not "the manufactuer, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors should not be prohibited." It's my opinion that if there was a new amendment that would be in direct conflict with the other amendments without expressly repealing them the conflicting amendment it would be a constitutional crisis and it would cause political instability. It would be, at the very least, go to the Supreme Court.
- tptacek 9y agoOf these, the most amusing might be the Titles of Nobility amendment, which, recall from this article, revokes the citizenship of anyone who accepts such a title: If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them. Mainstream US history strongly suggests that this amendment was never ratified; it came within a hair's breadth before the process was interrupted by the War of 1812. But enterprising conspiracy theorists^H^H^H^H^H^Hhistorians claim to have uncovered printed copies of the US Constitution indicating that Virginia had provided the critical 13th ratification, and that the amendment is technically in force. This forms the basis of a particularly virulent strain of Sovereign Citizenism ("Thirteentherism"). To wit: if the "original" 13th Amendment is in force, and practicing lawyers use the "title" "Esquire", then no lawyer participating in any legislature can be a citizen, and virtually all the laws passed in every legislating body in the country are null and void. This is silly on many levels ("esquire" wasn't a title of nobility, nor is it a title of any sort since it isn't hereditary, and, obviously, there isn't a secret original 13th Amendment) but that doesn't keep hundreds of people from relying on it to avoid paying taxes or, for that matter, filing hundreds of abusive false liens on the property of "illegitimate" public officials.
- philwelch 9y agoAs far as Sovereign Citizen conspiracy theories go, this is one of the more sensible ones that actually bears a resemblance to actual law rather than assigning talismanic significance to CAPITAL LETTERS or gold fringes on flags.
- Erlangolem 9y agoThe spider on the dollar bill gives me legal advice in my dreams, and it says I don’t have to pay taxes. Plus, it says the best way to deal with cops is to scream, “false arrest” at the top of my lungs. All praise the great money spider.
- walshemj 9y ago
- dheelus 9y agoI attended a popup theater in Austin where one of the guest speakers (Gregory Watson) was the gentleman who was influential in getting the 27th amendment passed. He, per his teacher, was a mediocre student at UT Austin and only received a C on the class he was attending. He was, however, dogged enough to persuade the states to ratify the amendment. His former teacher had learned of his role in getting the amendment passed and during the show, the UT President presented Gregory with an upgraded grade (A).