As one among many seeing a need (and opportunity) for big ideas to enable American reconstruction after this long, terrible moment, I have been daydreaming about what a new Constitutional order could look like.
A unicameral Congress
This proposal rests on an idea I have for replacing our first-past-the-post system with a novel system in which voters cast ranked ballots, producing a set of elected representatives each of whom holds different voting power in Congress, proportional to their voter support.
County councilors
To address regional interests, instead of tangling with creating fair congressional districts, leverage the somewhat-organic boundaries of counties. Have each county elect five councilors using this method. This eliminates districting fairness problems: though different counties would have different populations, it would be okay because councilors hold voting strength in Congress, each voter represented with an equal contribution to their councilor’s power.
With 3000+ counties in the US, that would require over 15,000 councilors! Best to have them cast votes electronically from their home county rather than send them to DC, which would make them more available to constituents.
Choose senators nationally
It is weird that the US has two geographically-determined sets of national representatives, so I propose choosing senators in a national election: everyone in the country votes, and the top ten candidates become senators.
These ten senators become the biggest movers in politics, a group small enough to have an unstructured discussion in a room together. They would provide policy package tentpoles, offering a greater range of options than just two (or a few) parties. The national election and proporational representation would support significant but thinly-distributed minorities; if 10% of the population shares interests but don’t hold a majority in any particular area, they can still elect a senator.
Assemblors chosen by sortition
Have 50 citizens chosen randomly, like a jury. Each would vote in congress with the strength of ⅟50th of the voting population. That creates a big enough group to smooth out the bumps of weird individuals, but a small enough group that they could convene in a room together and build real relationships.
All three types of reps vote together
Rather than having the weird two-stage process of current American bicameralism, in this system the three types of reps would vote in Congress at the same time. The councilors would not overwhelm the senators & assemblors because each councilor would vote with only the strength of the thousands of voters who elected them, while assemblors & senators vote with the strength of millions.
A measure supported by a strong majority of senators could pass if it was a bit short of a majorities of councilors & assemblors, et cetera.
A new type of supermajority
Parliamentary systems typically require some kind of supermajority for particularly strong measures. F’rinstance, it currently takes a 2/3 majority in the Senate to ratify a treaty.
In this system, strong measures could require not just a majority vote of the Congress as a whole but a majority among each of the three types of congressional representatives.
Distinct powers for different classes of representatives?
Some key particular functions may be assigned to one type of Congressional reps or another. Perhaps only senators can introduce new legislation, or judicial appointments are approved by the assemblors alone.
This can provide intra-Congressional checks-and-balances. Perhaps senators do not vote on impeachment proceedings against other senators; instead, impeachment requires a majority of the body of councilors & assemblors, and so forth.
This system also creates an implicit gauge of public support for assemblors. If they do their job well, fewer people might bother to vote for senators & councilors, granting assemblors more power in Congress, while if assemblors do badly, it would produce higher election turnout which outweighs assemblors’ power.
A parliamentary executive
Presidential systems have a host of problems. The US got lucky for a long time, but it seems our luck has run out. So Congress would choose the PM who serves as chief executive. With the PM directly appointed by Congress, we might be able to reduce or even eliminate the process of Congressional approval of executive appointments.
I hope that this kind of Congress picking a PM with ranked ballots would not be vulnerable to the deadlocks which prevent some parliamentary systems from forming a government … but the next piece may help with that ….
A ceremonial president
Unlike countries with constitutional monarchies, in the US the presidency awkwardly combines the chief executive with the ceremonial head of state. Given the American legacy of the poetry of the presidency, it would be nice to keep the office to serve as the latter, the kind of job that Ronald Reagan would have been great at and Donald Trump would have been relatively harmless at.
The president would have be chosen with a national popular vote. For consistency, the presidency could have ranked ballots where voters can list anyone they like, just as they do for senators and councilors, though with a single victor they would have to be evaluated a little differently from my system for electing representatives. Given the much lower stakes, any method would do.
In their ceremonial function, the president would deliver an annual State Of The Union address, award medals, et cetera. I like the idea of the president holding a bouquet of ombudsman-like powers. It might be useful if the president could compel Congress to vote on a question. The pardon creates a conflict of interest in the hands of a chief executive but might be reasonable for this kind of president. I imagine giving the president a discretionary budget of maybe 0.1% of the national budget.
I wouldn’t subject the president to term limits, but I do want this to be a role that honored political leaders would retire to, so a past president would be barred from holding any other government position.
I imagine that the president would continue to use the White House, but get cut off from all the extra business in the basement, which instead would be at the disposal of the PM with an office in the Old Executive Office Building.
Unitary government with stronger counties
Americans tend to assume that members of the House Of Representatives also have power in their home districts, so I would have councilors also govern the counties they represent. A county would be governed by a council comprised of those councilors plus local assemblors chosen by sortition. The councilors would vote both in the national Congress and in the local council, while the local assemblors would only vote on that county’s council.
Rather than have our complex overlapping jurisdictional relationships between municipalties, counties, states, and the federal government, I imagine a unitary system which only structurally recognizes the national government and counties, with power resting in the national government, which assigns power & responsibilities to the counties. States would become agreements between counties and municipalities instruments controlled by counties, grandfathered in but subject to revision by county government.
Frustrated by the current American system which creates dramatic inequities in local resources like schools, I would constitutionally restrain counties from raising funds. Each county would be funded out of the national budget, directly proportional to their population, at a rate set by Congress.
Because councilors vote in Congress, the national government would not starve the counties of funding or authority … but senators & assemblors considering policy at the national scale would balance assemblors’ appetite.
Judiciary
This system is compatible with any number of approaches to judicial reform I have seen. I have given this aspect much less thought.
Say, f’rinstance, that the Supreme Court works much the way it does now, but instead of our weird system of death and gerentocracy we appoint a new Justice each year and retire the longest-serving justice if that gives the Court more than nine (or however many) Justices. Much like now, the PM might propose appointments subject to approval by Congress … or perhaps ratification is a job for just the assemblors?
Anti-corruption measures
Any such surgery on the Constitution is a good time to get the money out of politics. There are good, familiar proposals like public funding of political campaigning. I have a radical proposal to include in the mix.
Any elected official or appointed officials above a certain threshold of authority becomes a Public Citizen for life with tightly constrained rules for their personal finances. They get a lifetime pension of twice the national median income … but are forbidden to take any other money from anyone. The national government takes custody of their assets, though they get right of first refusal to rent their house at market rates.
This would be expensive and tricky to enforce, but would prevent electeds from governing to the benefit of monied interests and then cashing in afterward. Plus it would encourage ordinary people to take on government service, while deterring rich people.
Miscellany
A few more radical proposals:
Pre-commitment to legislation
Candidates for legislative office may make a binding promise to vote for specific legislation. If that law comes to a vote they don’t get a choice; they must cast the vote they promised. To avoid shenanigans, this would have to be bound to very specific legislative language.
Re-drawing county lines
With counties so important, it would be valuable to have a difficult-but-not-impossible process for splitting, merging, and otherwise re-drawing county boundaries. Councils could propose changes and put them to a plebicite, which would require majority approval in each region affected. So if County A wanted to take custody of Region B within County C, it would require a successful vote among voters in County A and Region B and the rump County C.
Pace layers
Assemblors have a lot of responsibility, so give them an eight-year term. In their first two years, an assemblor gets tutored in the operations of the government. In their third year, they participate in the assembly but do not have a vote. Then they participate in the assembly for five years. Each year ten new assemblors join the pipeline and ten retire, giving the body of assemblors continuity.
The ranked-ballot system gives incumbents a significant credibility advantage, but having their voting power proportional support means that reps’ strength will wax and wane with public support. I think it would be wise to have the senate face an election every year, while counties might come up for election at a slower cadence, maybe every five years.
Since the presidency is much less fraught in this system, I don’t think the cadence matters; it might make sense to have Congress call Presidential elections, and compel them to call them at least every six years.
No other elected positions?
I am skeptical that having a lot of elected positions creates more democratic accountability. Voters choose only senators, councilors, and the president.
Insulated accountability bodies
There are a few forms of accountability which should be protected from election pressures, as the judiciary is now in the US. I imagine a set of bodies with specific domains of interest and subpoena power. I think I think that these should be appointed by the national assemblors, whose limited terms and varied backgrounds present the least temptation to corrode these bodies’ willingness to check irresponsbile exercise of power.
- Rather than have the constitutionality of legislation governed by a reactive SCOTUS, I would have a body committed to this function with a mandate to positively address these questions.
- Public Citizens need to be audited to ensure that they obey the financial restrictions upon them.
- Government secrecy is necessary for certain purposes but invites abuse, so there needs to be a body able to inspect government programs and information, to check that secrecy is actually justified.
- Citizens need reporting of factual information about government operations beyond what journalists can do, as current bodies like the Congressional Budget Office do. for more general transparency about certain key facts of governance, as with the Congressional Budget Office.
Related
re: Constitution
Another interestingly novel proposal for the US restructuring our government.
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