Fixing the US Congress, Ideas Thread

[Bill3000]

I like how people are trying to save the ol' deliberative democracy as if it's some shining beacon of political wisdom. Empowering the legislature at the expense of unions? Well, we all know that would give more power to the average citizen relative to the rich and influential people

Well, it's the US, so the average citizen isn't unionized

 

[aelf]

Well, it's the US, so the average citizen isn't unionized

Then the average citizen should be, 'cause the way things are, it's only foolish to pretend that you can match the power of influential organisations/lobby groups without collective action and by somehow empowering the oh-so-representative legislature.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Take the power of redistricting away from state legislatures. Increase the size of the House of Representatives and keep the number of individuals represented in each district as even as possible. Ignore state boundaries entirely in making these districts if necessary.


Ban any official government recognition or subsidies of political parties, including primary elections.

Require all candidates seeking ballot access to submit one page essays describing their ideology, endorsements, qualifications for the position, and any other reasons they deserve the public support more than their opponents. Require that they accompany these with affidavits, so that they may be charged with perjury for any falsehoods included in these essays. Do not allow any candidate with a perjury conviction to run for any office. Make the essays public at least 2 weeks before the election in order to be publicly vetted, and include their full text on the ballots themselves. Voters should have this date in front of them when they make their final decision at the ballot box rather than needing to rely on name recognition which the major candidates


Mandate the use of Range Voting for selecting all members of the house (and the president).


Decrease the size of the senate and completely change how it operates. Rather than giving the citizens of each state 2 representatives here, make the entire senate represent the nation at large. Use Reweighted Range Voting (The non partisan proportional representation variant of range voting) to elect, say, 5 new members each election cycle. Five year terms seem good, which would keep the senate at the manageable size of 25. (I'm not dead set on the exact numbers or term durations, and would be fine with a 16 to 49 member senate as well.)


Abolish the current system of seniority and party affiliation determining the each member's influence. Mandate the use of range voting among congresspersons to determine leadership positions and reweighted range voting to determine committee memberships.


Allow a super majority of state legislatures to overturn any act of congress or executive order.

Allow national initiatives with adequate super majorities to overturn acts of congress, the executive, and to call for the recall of any elected official or the firing of any appointed official. Require that these initiatives start with petitions from private citizens, not elected officials.

Whenever the right of jury nullification is invoked, it should automatically cause the law to be placed on the ballot for the public to repeal. If the populace votes to keep said law, then the law would not be nullifies in that case either and the defendant would be ruled guilty (providing the jury found the defendant guilty on the merits of the case and only ruled not guilty because of a fault in the law.


Change the oath of office so that it does not allow a politician to campaign for office until the completion of the term to which he or she was elected (even if he or she resigned before completing the term). Yes, I am including reelection campaigns in this. As this is essentially a term limit of one (although candidates could run again after a term out of office) and because I allow for initiatives to remove them from office, most terms should be made longer.


Set the salary of congressmen based on the average income of their constituents (say, 2 to 4 times that, or maybe the median plus the mean). However, do not allow them to collect this salary in years when the national debt increases.

 

[carmen510]

Then the average citizen should be, 'cause the way things are, it's only foolish to pretend that you can match the power of influential organisations/lobby groups without collective action and by somehow empowering the oh-so-representative legislature.

Aren't certain public sectors in trouble BECAUSE of empowered unionized workers, like teachers' unions for example?

 

[JollyRoger]

Aren't certain public sectors in trouble BECAUSE of empowered unionized workers, like teachers' unions for example?

No, they are in trouble becuase legislators and governors would rather blame the unions than themselves for bad policy.

 

[Cutlass]

Aren't certain public sectors in trouble BECAUSE of empowered unionized workers, like teachers' unions for example?

Not at all. These people are not paid particularly well. They are just east scapegoats.

 

[Miles Teg]

I'm sure Bachman would stand out, even in a smaller district.
And i doubt your whole argument anyway. You seem to be claiming that people monitor their congressman mostly via national media.
I seriously doubt that local newspapers etc. are that dead. I wouldn't know, though.

Local newspapers shutting their doors is actually a huge problem, and it looks like it's getting worse. The internet has given local newspapers competitors that they can't compete with. For the most part this is a good thing (competition leads to better, cheaper products), but there are a few areas that are suffering. Investigative reporting in state capitals is the big problem area.

Anyways, local newspapers are dying, and the idea of citizens have personal ties with congressmen is long dead (and we can't bring it back without disenfranchisement). If you're going to change the system, plan for the future.

Ban any official government recognition or subsidies of political parties, including primary elections.

I'm curious about why you think political parties are so horrible.

Require all candidates seeking ballot access to submit one page essays describing their ideology, endorsements, qualifications for the position, and any other reasons they deserve the public support more than their opponents. Require that they accompany these with affidavits, so that they may be charged with perjury for any falsehoods included in these essays.

Under what conditions could a legislator be charged with perjury? If he voted for a bill that someone judged to be antithetical to his platform? If he voted against something he thought he should vote for? Or would he have to be caught on tape saying that he just supported something so those stupid rubes would vote for him?

Leaving aside the fact that you would essentially outlaw elected officials changing their minds, any legislation that discourages logrolling in Congress is just going to make everything worse, not better.

Mandate the use of Range Voting for selecting all members of the house (and the president).

Pointless. The country isn't bursting at the seams to vote for third party candidates, and gimmicky voting schemes aren't going to make them do so.

Abolish the current system of seniority and party affiliation determining the each member's influence. Mandate the use of range voting among congresspersons to determine leadership positions and reweighted range voting to determine committee memberships.

Depending on whether or not this would actually change anything, it'd either be pointless or completely awful. In all likelihood, Democrats would just give the high possible rating to their candidate, the lowest possible to the Republican one, vice verse, and whoever has more representatives wins.

If it actually changes something, then we have problems.

Allow a super majority of state legislatures to overturn any act of congress or executive order.

Would require an amendment to the constitution. There's nothing that could pass a super-majority of state legislatures that couldn't pass through Congress, and state nullificationists should have rotten fruit thrown at them, not encouragement.

Whenever the right of jury nullification is invoked, it should automatically cause the law to be placed on the ballot for the public to repeal.

First, wouldn't we have to decide that jury nullification is acceptable? Also, I think that violates the principle of double jeopardy.

Change the oath of office so that it does not allow a politician to campaign for office until the completion of the term to which he or she was elected (even if he or she resigned before completing the term). Yes, I am including reelection campaigns in this.

I didn't know you were that in love with the idea of unelected lobbyists running Washington. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Set the salary of congressmen based on the average income of their constituents (say, 2 to 4 times that, or maybe the median plus the mean). However, do not allow them to collect this salary in years when the national debt increases.

I agree. We don't need any congressmen who can't afford to work for a year without compensation whenever the economy gets bad. Poor people (and middle class people) are stupid and ugly.

 

[Arwon]

Independent in what way? Apolitical? Balanced? How does it work? We here do in fact have non-partisan committees, but they always end up being partisan in the end. And whoever ends up on the losing end screams bloody murder. A few exceptions - The Federal Reserve Board (The Fed) , the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - anything not having to do with politics.

It works well, isn't known to be partisan and doesn't feel the need to get involved in politics? I mean, is it really that hard to imagine or is America just that screwed up. In any case, the composition of the Australian Electoral Commission's (AEC) board might be instructive: it has three members, one of whom must be an active or retired member of the Federal Court of Australia, the Electoral Commissioner and a non-judicial member. The current board is composed of an ex-Federal Court Judge, Peter Heerey, the Australian Statistician, Brian Pink and the Commisioner. The role of the board and the AEC is enshrined in the Commonwealth Electoral Act (1918) which also serves as the originating act for the AEC and the board. The AEC isn't however a government department, it's a statutory authority which means that that in creating it Parliament also de-evolved some of its powers - in this case stuff relating to elections - to the AEC. This also gives it some distance from government. For reference, our Reserve Bank is also a SA, which might give you a metric to compare against. Suffice to say that the arrangement has been entirely satisfactory to everyone including jaded voters like me.

Just to add to that:

Removal of the commissioner, as with other statutory authorities like the Statistician and the Reserve Bank governor, takes a joint sitting of both houses of parliament. Very difficult.

When it recruits public servants, the AEC specifically asks about political affiliation. If you're a member of a party you're very unlikely to be selected. And even the CPSU (the union) members there are not allowed to tick the little box that counts their membership towards the Labor Party.

So yeah, all you need is an apolitical public service and a clear set of rules laid down in legislation, in order to make an independent Electoral Commission work. You've already got the basic legislative template in the US through the Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Census or the Government Accountability Office.

 

[downtown]

Downtown Ideas I Like:

For what it's worth, these are mostly just ideas from the article (and two that pop up in other articles I read, not necessarily ones I like. For example, I'm really against term limits, for the same reason you are...it gives far more power to special interest groups and parties.

1. Fixing Gerrymandering: This should be obvious. Either appoint a national non-partisan committee to draw up districts, or have each state make their own. Either way, get it out of the political field.

Doesn't each state make their own anyway? Use a damn computer.

3. Depoliticizing the Speaker's Office: Not necessarily a bad idea, but I don't see what it would do. The senate has the president pro tempore, who's about as nonpartisan as an elected member of the majority party can be, but it doesn't really change anything. Gingrich's changes had more to do with the power of the speaker's office. The partisanship was just a byproduct of his own sunny disposition.

You may be right about the power, rather than the politics. All of the textbooks I read (and this article) seem to imply that Gingrich took it down a pretty terrible road (and one continued, in all fairness, by Pelosi. The trappings of power are nice after all), but I don't really know how to roll that back.

1. Breaking the Filibuster: The current 60 vote Senate is basically the result of a loophole from the 70s. I don't think the Senate should be completely majoritarian, but maybe we could reduce the number of votes required to break a filibuster, or something.

I like this idea. If you're going to filibuster, I'd make them at least actually read the phone book.

2. Fix the Nomination Process: Right now, the Senate has to unanimously approve a nominee for any politically appointed post, or the nomination languishes for months. Make it a simple majority vote

Yeah, the idea of one guy being able to hold up a nomination is pretty bogus.

Well Citizens United http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission is a very recent decision so you can't blame it for the current state of Congress. Also if i may take an unpopular position, it is the correct decision. You can donate to candidates, but not as part of a group? It does appear to violate the first amendment. Why would you lose your free speech rights when you join together with others?

No, you're right, it's too recent to blame everything on it. It does, however, completely flood elections with special interest money, something that most observers (and even the members of Congress I've personally spoken with about this) rave about as causing most of the problems.

Term limits. Preferably a single term. Then destroy lobbyists. That would solve the vast majority of problems right there.

Sounds like a pretty terrible idea to me...nobody ever learns the mechanics of how to govern, everybody has an information gap, and we get lots of crappy bills. Also, the non-elected mechanisms of the govt become more powerful.

Concerning Gerrymandering - the idea that a non-partisan committee could fix that is problematic. It's just a phrase, I don't think there is any such thing as a non-partisan committee (a Democrat, a Republican and a German Shepard?). It's been 200 years and we haven't got rid of Gerrymandering - just give both sides equal opportunity and it balances out.

I think you're right that a truly "non partisan" board is awfully hard to create, but when both sides get a chance to do it, the voters lose. That just means an equal number of completely uncompetitive congressional districts.

This, with ranked voting preferences.


Downtown, you had all these options for fixing Congress and all of them involved minor fixes with the House. The House is fine, given winner-take-all, geography-based representation. The Senate is not. The Senate is a broken body. The winner-take-all, geographic representation is a broken concept as well.

A unicameral parliament with ranked voting would solve the real problems of our legislature.

Yeah, I did that because the article in the OP (which is good!) was about the house.

 

[Paul in Saudi]

The number of Representatives allotted to each state in the lower house shall be determined by the number of lawful votes cast for that house in the preceding election.

That is, suppress the vote and lose seats.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Take the power of redistricting away from state legislatures. Increase the size of the House of Representatives and keep the number of individuals represented in each district as even as possible. Ignore state boundaries entirely in making these districts if necessary.


Ban any official government recognition or subsidies of political parties, including primary elections.

Require all candidates seeking ballot access to submit one page essays describing their ideology, endorsements, qualifications for the position, and any other reasons they deserve the public support more than their opponents. Require that they accompany these with affidavits, so that they may be charged with perjury for any falsehoods included in these essays. Do not allow any candidate with a perjury conviction to run for any office. Make the essays public at least 2 weeks before the election in order to be publicly vetted, and include their full text on the ballots themselves. Voters should have this date in front of them when they make their final decision at the ballot box rather than needing to rely on name recognition which the major candidates


Mandate the use of Range Voting for selecting all members of the house (and the president).


Decrease the size of the senate and completely change how it operates. Rather than giving the citizens of each state 2 representatives here, make the entire senate represent the nation at large. Use Reweighted Range Voting (The non partisan proportional representation variant of range voting) to elect, say, 5 new members each election cycle. Five year terms seem good, which would keep the senate at the manageable size of 25. (I'm not dead set on the exact numbers or term durations, and would be fine with a 16 to 49 member senate as well.)


Abolish the current system of seniority and party affiliation determining the each member's influence. Mandate the use of range voting among congresspersons to determine leadership positions and reweighted range voting to determine committee memberships.


Allow a super majority of state legislatures to overturn any act of congress or executive order.

Allow national initiatives with adequate super majorities to overturn acts of congress, the executive, and to call for the recall of any elected official or the firing of any appointed official. Require that these initiatives start with petitions from private citizens, not elected officials.

Whenever the right of jury nullification is invoked, it should automatically cause the law to be placed on the ballot for the public to repeal. If the populace votes to keep said law, then the law would not be nullifies in that case either and the defendant would be ruled guilty (providing the jury found the defendant guilty on the merits of the case and only ruled not guilty because of a fault in the law.


Change the oath of office so that it does not allow a politician to campaign for office until the completion of the term to which he or she was elected (even if he or she resigned before completing the term). Yes, I am including reelection campaigns in this. As this is essentially a term limit of one (although candidates could run again after a term out of office) and because I allow for initiatives to remove them from office, most terms should be made longer.


Set the salary of congressmen based on the average income of their constituents (say, 2 to 4 times that, or maybe the median plus the mean). However, do not allow them to collect this salary in years when the national debt increases.

Wow, you've put a lot of thought into this. I agree with a lot of it.