New Constitutional Convention

[bobman0330]

-end of electoral college. Very likely and very good idea.
-spending restrictions. Fairly likely, and not a great idea. A better idea is:
-revamped House voting. Either some form of IRV and/or PR (across the board), or at least a reworking of how districts are drawn up. Current system is awful.
-More transparency in legislative process. Fewer riders, earmarks, etc.
-Rebalancing between branches. Not knowledgeable enough to make specific recommendations, but there's been a lot of growth away from the original structure, and it would no doubt be good to give the whole checks-and-balances thing a tune-up.
-Acceptance or rejection of a lot of Supreme Court stuff. Roe v. Wade, broad Commerce Clause authority, exclusionary rule, Miranda, all looked at and either explicitly accepted or thrown out.

[BigBuffet]

Nice intellectual exercise and I would like to see it, but I doubt it would ever happen. If there was a major upheaval in this country, the plethora of Executive Orders are sufficient to explicitly torch the Constitution (versus the implicit torching it has received through various treaties over the years and the Bush family's Patriot Act). We would have a president-turned-dictator or UN intervention "to restore order".

[AlienBoy]

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I dont get what you mean by "the President would be popularly elected, or at least there would be a significant change to how the President was elected".


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Currently, the president is elected by an electoral college (not a direct vote from the citizenry.) Each state is granted a number of electors (2 + their number of representatives in the House, for a minimum of 3.) Each state can then decide how their electors will vote. Most states have opted for a system where the candidate who wins the popular election in the state will receive ALL of the electors from their state.


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The electoral college is an anachronism that has to go - it may have made sense in the rural beginnings of our nation, but today it needs to be abolished.



Having said that, a constitutional convention is a horrid idea. At this point, we need the restrictive amendment process - a "doors open" free for all in today's political climate would be a pure disaster.


AB