I have a lot of thoughts on this, but some quick ones:
1) Voting is an absolute right which cannot be abrogated from any eligible voter for any reason.
-All citizens (and possibly all permanent residents - haven't decided on this one yet) over the age of 18 are eligible to vote in Federal Elections
-All citizens, permanent residents, and residents with a visa whose duration will extend beyond the date of the next election are eligible to vote in the State and Local elections of their established residence
-Voting day is held on a weekend day, where every eligible voter is guaranteed by their employer 4 hours of paid time-off to vote (in the circumstance that they are working on voting day).
-All citizens are automatically enrolled to vote. A national website will run which allows voters to indicate preferred voting method (in-person or by-mail) and register with a convenient polling place (if in-person) up to 7 days before election.
-All citizens will officially receive a citizenship-ID number and accompanying card. This card must be presented at the polling place to vote (if in-person)
-Voting is not mandatory, however, voting registration is opt-out, rather than opt-in.
2) Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands; and Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas will perform an in/out referendum, with a simple majority decided pass/fail. Either of the two entities will be granted immediate statehood upon pass, with fail triggering mechanisms for a smooth transition to independence. DC gains full statehood. Break up California, either into 3 or 5 states. NYC/Long Island becomes an independent state.
Some other things I might get to later:
-House is heavily expanded, and districts are combined to allow for STV-style voting
-Senate is heavily expanded to allow for the same.
-Term limits for congress and senate
-Heavy restrictions on campaigning periods, all funding is fixed and federally provided. Possible restrictions on equal coverage time from media outlets
-All congresspeople need to hold at least one town hall, open to the general public (no restrictions placed except in the case of credible threats of violence) in a location that is reasonably accessible to his electorate. Town hall is to be filmed, with livestreams free and available to the public.
-Supreme court is expanded, with mandatory term limits for justices. Possibly a stricter process for nomination, i.e. bipartisan congressional/senate committee prepares and delivers a list of acceptable candidates from which the president nominates one, or else clear and explicit eligibility requirements (i.e. experience/credentials requirements). Terms are staggered so every presidential term gets 2 nominations, possibly with a second or understudy nominated in the event of a death-in-office. Nomination period has a clear timeline for acceptance. Unclear how to implement this in practice. Perhaps if senate and president cannot come to agreement within a given timeframe, the court or the retiring judge picks his successor. Possibly even remove nomination/confirmation process altogether and have judicial appointments follow standard bureaucratic practices (i.e. promote most senior/qualified justice from circuit courts).
-There should be some oversight committee/bureau in both federal and state/local governments tasked with reviewing a law before it is approved to ensure it is in keeping with established statute/constitution/constitutional precedent. The current (Republican) state-level policy of passing a law which is clearly unconstitutional, and which the state legislature knows is unconstitutional because they know that by the time the bill gets shot down the desired effect will already have occurred rendering the overturning moot is disgusting.
Here I am talking specifically about:
a) Voter restriction laws, e.g. in North Dakota or North Carolina or George, passed just before the election to disenfranchise specific groups ahead of the upcoming election. It doesn't matter if the law is overturned in 2019 when the disenfranchisement already achieved its intended effect in 2018.
b) Anti-abortion laws, namely ones that place undue "safety" requirements on abortion clinics which either force the clinic to close outright (e.g. "minimum distance from a school" requirements or "outpatient care requirements") or drive them out of business due to excessive medical equipment costs (e.g. room size or hallway width requirements and the like). It doesn't matter if the Supreme Court determined the state was wrong to pass the law when the law already drove 66% of the abortion clinics out of business. Absent a mandate that the state pay to have these clinics reopened, they ain't coming back.
Rights/Civil Rights/Human Rights issues:
Health care is a fundamental human right. Government has an obligation to provide health care, whether as a single payer or as a public option - I'd prefer the former, obviously.
Anti-discrimination clause amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of: age, religion, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender orientation, or socio-economic background.
Minimum wage established tacked to a predefined quality-of-life standard.
Paid parental leave
Stronger unionization protections
Just general labor protections
Copyrights fixed to 40-50 years with no possibility of renewal.
Education is a fundamental human right. Federal government runs/oversees school standards. Homeschooling/private schools allowed, but required to teach to educational standards, children required to sit for federally-administered end-of-year exams.
Public Universities are tuition-free, possibly with citizens receiving a stipend to defray some of the cost of attending a private institution or overseas/out-of-country institution. Eligibility for attending any university in the US is decided through a federally-administered exam taken at the end of age-17 school year.
Private and for-profit prisons are banned.
Mandatory or unpaid prison labor is banned.
Prison labor which serves as work-experience for a training program is allowed.
At a state level I'd like to see some kind of restriction on a city's ability to give away large amounts of money in the form of tax handouts, loans, etc. to corporations without a clear monetary value. This is in part an i.e. something like Vegas giving $300M to the Oakland Raiders for a new stadium when stadium deals have been shown to never offset their costs, or the city of New York giving away millions of dollars to Amazon to build a headquarters when they, in all likelihood, were going to build one in that city anyway, or else the city of Chicago offering to grant Amazon discretionary use of its employees' local tax contributions. At the very least, these sorts of deals should require a public referendum before they are allowed to be approved.
