Representation Amendment – Carl Peter Klapper
The Popular Capitalist View
With the recent announcement of the retirement of Justice Souter from the Supreme Court and the new and awkward position of Lieutenant Governor for the State of New Jersey, it seems a good time to consider issues of representation and balance of powers. These had taken shape in my own mind over two years ago as a proposed Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, but there are clear implications for New Jersey that will also, hopefully, materialize as a New Jersey Constitutional Amendment.
In both the State and Federal arenas, we have weak sub-executive positions and judicial arms which are or will become subservient to the party in power. The Federal position is, perhaps, slightly stronger than the State’s in design, by virtue of the Presidency of the Senate being held by the Vice-President, while there is no such provision for the Lieutenant Governor. This stronger Federal provision doubtless resulted from the Vice President’s original role as the “loyal opposition”–the runnerup in the Presidential election. It is that role which I seek to restore and to further with its use by introducing a greater countervailing power into the judicial branch of government. A similar approach in New Jersey would give a usefulness and purpose to the Lieutenant Governor post. In addition, both the federal and state judiciaries would gain a greater independence from the chief executive, increasing the longer the same person holds that office and their chief rival holds the sub-executive slot.
The interest to the populist, and hence the popular capitalist, in all of this is to both limit the power of government over individuals and to maximize the enfranchisement and representation of all people within that government. A strong sub-executive representing the chief political minority and an independent judiciary which protects minority interests from the incursions of the politically dominant groups, these both extend enfranchisement and representation far beyond the majority or plurality which would otherwise rule a democracy. The other provisions extend representation even further, to the residents of the District of Columbia and the youth, and limit the taxation of military service from being imposed on those who have not been represented in the policies that require their active service.
So, without further ado, here is my proposed Amendment to the United States Constitution on the subject of Representation:
1. The twelfth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
2. The people of the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect a number of Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, by an at-large election where the top vote-getters are chosen to serve as Representatives, and also one Senator elected at-large.
3. The General Election Day will be a holiday in the United States.
4. The election of President and Vice-President is amended as follows:
1. For purposes of nominating a field of candidates for President of the United States:
i. Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, two Nominators;
ii. The people of the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall elect Nominators in the same number and manner as their election of Representatives and Senator; and
iii. The people of each House District in the States shall elect a Nominator for their district.
iv. No Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed or elected a Nominator.
v. The election of the Nominators shall be held on the second Tuesday of May in the year prior to the start of the next Presidential term. This day shall be a holiday in the United States.
vi. On the second Tuesday of July of that same year, the Nominators shall meet in general assembly in the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States to nominate and then select from those nominations a field of five candidates for President of the United States.
1. The Proceedings of the Nominator College are presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
2. At the start of this assembly, each nominator will nominate a distinct and eligible candidate for President.
3. Successive ballots will be taken, with each Nominator casting only one vote per Ballot, until the first ballot where the top five vote-getters have together received at least ninety percent of the votes of the Nominators.
4. Those top five vote-getters constitute the field of five candidates for President of the United States.
2. The people of the United States shall elect the President, from among the five candidates nominated by the Nominator College, in a popular election to be held on the second Tuesday in September of that same year. This day shall be a holiday in the United States.
3. The top two vote-getters of the September Presidential Election will become the candidates for a run-off Presidential Election to be held with the general election on the second Tuesday in November.
4. The candidate getting the most votes will become President-elect and the runnerup will become Vice-President-elect.
5. There shall be nine justices of the Supreme Court, each serving a term of nine years, with nine classes at one year intervals. They shall be appointed by the Vice-President serving at the time of vacancy created, either by completion of a term or by mid-term vacancies, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Justice serving the last year of his term will be the Chief Justice for that year.
1. Existing Justices as of passage of this amendment will be placed in the nine classes based on seniority, the Justice with the greatest seniority being in the class with the most recently expiring term and the Justice with the least seniority being in the class with the term set to expire last.
6. The right of citizens of the United States, who are thirteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State or District on account of age.
7. No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and been for two Years an Inhabitant of that State or District in which he shall be chosen.
8. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been twelve Years a Citizen of the United States, and been for seven years an Inhabitant of that State or District for which he shall be chosen.
9. No Person shall be compelled or allowed to serve in the military of the United States or of any State who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States.
10. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
How does your electionering plan account for the likely occurance of one party simply nomenating a majority of the presidental seats?
Why is your method better than what we have now?
What is wrong with a life time term for the bench, especialy considering the contentious nature of trhe bench the propensity for politicing that your plan may engender?
Why should D.C. have its own represnentatives when they could simply vote in maryland for that pourpose, if one unodes the legeslation imposed in the 1880’s to prevent thme from doing that?
Why are you raisng the millitary age and imposing residency requierments on federal representation that should be left to the several states?
Thanks for your comments Wesley. In reply:
1. A lock, if that is what you are concerned about, is far from likely. The nominators are chosen district by district, except for the state-wide selection. The political parties are not as powerful on the local level as they are on the national and state level, for the simple reason that anybody can run locally on their being well-known in their town. Further, the process stipulates that each nominator present a unique name for consideration. The degree of coordination required for the discipline of a concerted vote in a general convention for just the five approved party candidates is unrealistic and would further require that one party to control nine-tenths of the nominators.
A weaker notion of nominating three of the five candidates for the general election still requires a substantial dominance and discipline of the nominators from the one party, above and beyond other smaller groups of supporters. Yet, even if they stack the pool, what does that gain them? The dominant party splitting the party faithful among their three candidates could allow a candidate or two who are not from that party with substantial support to make it to the top two. The parties, even a dominant one, are thus strongly discouraged from attempting to control the election and lend their full support to their one Presidential candidate, leaving the Vice-Presidency to a candidate representing the interests of those outside the party fold.
2. This is easily an improvement over the arbitrary primary system, where most of the country is ignored in nominating candidates and where many people register in the opposite party so that they have at least some say in some nomination from where they live. In my method, people have someone from their community who represents their interests in the crucial nomination process. Then they have two general elections, the first one voting their best preference and the other voting, at worst, their fourth best preference.
My method thus provides a better choice, less manipulation and a meaningful Vice-Presidency.
3. The problem with a life term is that, eventually, Justices die. When they do, or when they simply retire, they throw a political bonanza into the lap of the President. At certain times, a President can pick his Court so that the balance of power is tipped in his favor when he most needs to be restrained. Long periods of party dominance can more reliably lead to packing the Supreme Court and the abandonment of an increasingly disenfranchised minority.
I propose a regular system of replacing Justices with those picked by a representative of the minority interest: the re-cast Vice-President. As the President serves his term and possibly a second, the Vice-President will be filling the Supreme Court with Justices holding a dissenting view from the President. In this way the Court provides a check against entrenched majority rule.
4. Interesting alternative. I take it they do not have to physically vote in Maryland, but that they would have districts for U. S. Representatives and Maryland legislative districts, as well as at-large voting rights. Given the location of key federal offices in the Virginia side of the original district, perhaps some thought should be given to reversing the split-off there and instituting a similar arrangement with Virginia.
5. I am raising the military age because we are asking citizens to serve before they have been given an adequate opportunity to shape policies which are putting them in harm’s way. This I regard as taxation without representation.
I am imposing more rigorous residency requirements to stop the practice of the political parties schlepping in candidates from out of state and lending them special support and advertising in defeating better in-state candidates. This levels the playing field for young candidates and, with the new base of young voters, increases the impact of youth on creating policies affecting the extent and severity of military service when they reach military age.
Another thought on comment point (4):
There is still the issue of the extent of home rule for Washington as a city. I am conflicted on this, in that the greatest threats to the urban fabric came from the federal government that, from time to time, concocted grandiose plans for extending the Mall eastward and obliterating the Capitol Hill neighborhood with its historical and architectural treasures. On the other hand, I had no representation in my own city government because of the Hatch Act’s prohibition of government workers’ participation in politics at the local level. My alternatives for avoiding the waste, corruption and excessive taxation by the government of Mayor Barry were to move outside the city into mostly non-urban environments accessible by rail or urban environments mostly unreachable by rail, taking me out of my pedestrian comfort zone, by quitting my government job and seeking work with one of the private companies in DC or by leaving government work and DC altogether. Those of my co-workers who remained government workers opted for the first alternative. I explored the second and took the third by returning to school. Of course, none of these alternatives remedied the problems of home rule and, because of those problems and the prospect of an unconstrained local government being as much a threat to historic and urban preservation as any Congressional committee, I am generally opposed to home rule for DC.
However, in keeping with the suggestion of (4), administering DC as a county of Maryland presents similar problems with the additional onus of making Maryland a State of undue influence. If the residents of DC are given representation in Maryland’s legislature, they will be given influence over State programs of which they are likely not the beneficiaries and will vote on revenue measures of which they are likely not the payor. This disembodied representation serves no useful purpose and certainly does not contribute to solving the problem of government workers living decidedly undemocratic lives. But does anything really? I just don’t know of any good solution to the problem of reconciling the interests of government workers as residents of the District with the interests of the rest of the country in not having the operations of its government manipulated by its host city. That is, I am not convinced that the District can be a solution to the problem it was created to solve.
Perhaps, the best we can wish for is to compensate the residents of this company town of DC for their lack of local influence with special influence in the federal legislatures by having them constitute a separate electorate — undiluted by those of the States of Maryland and Virginia — whose Representatives and one Senator, under my plan, will represent the interests of the necessarily servile residents of the federal government’s host city.
I still remain unconvinced that we will be better off. The rules may change but the plays will remin the same.
5. What makes 25 an adequate opportunity? The millitary can also be source of growth for some of our young malcontents. Duty, honor, country, and a chance to earn an education.
1. I have never been in favor of publicly administerd primary elections. I would prefer if the parties decied amongst themselves who best articulates their views and then place them beofre the public. Primaries that are as open or closed as they, in the capacity of private organizations, want.
3. your solution would multiply the number of political bonanzas rather than reduce them, and the vice president is not the representative of the minority, but of his own intrest. This is true of most politicans but from what I have seen of the primrose popinjays that seek elected office, four more choices would not improve the process.
More players will be allowed than currently and their means of introduction into the process and elevation once there will change so that the lock which the political parties have on the nomination will be removed. That, in itself, eliminates the manipulative plays the parties make in seeking control of the executive branch.
If the federal voting age is reduced to 13 then, by age 25, prospective soldiers would have had 12 years of voting behind them. If 20 year-olds can run for and some get elected for the House, there is an opportunity of two and a half terms for them to affect policy before they are eligible for military service.
The rest of the popular capitalism addresses the causes of malcontent directly rather than bribe the malcontents with improved job prospects in order to get them to risk losing their life. Those who serve for duty, honor and country are content and would retain that motivation as they wait to be of age.
The main difference of opinion we seem to have is about political parties. I am against them because they do not represent the people, but the career politicians for which they are, in effect, labor unions. I thus prefer electing representatives outside of the control of these “private organizations” who would conduct an open, general primary considering a wide field of potential candidates.
The Vice President’s interest is a minority interest in my plan, as the President’s interest is a majority one. The “popinjay” factor — wherein majority and minority are defined by celebrity — would be reduced in my plan because, by design, the candidates do not seek the Presidency, but the nomination process seeks them. Remember, each Nominator must come with a unique candidate and is free to vote for whomever they please. The effective avenues for campaigning are limited to the two popular votes.
There is a certain viertue to the way things are now, both sides so fustrait each other that hardly anything can get done.
I am still not understanding how you expect political parties not not find someway to work the system in ther favor. You argure that by forcing a nomenator to pick a uniqe candidate, the party may be split. Have you observed a presidental primary. Ten of the nations least desierable men of public office fight to have a chan ce to argue over who is a margenaly less unpleasant choice. Besides, my views are of that boysterous minority that is feard by the common yobbo.I am ardently agsains the governmet having more power, money, or pretenses of altruism.
In taking the nomination of presidential candidates out of the parties’ hands, we would be removing the major source of their political power and control. Sure, the parties will attempt to run their own candidates for Nominators, but independent, regular people have a better chance of being elected for a position such as this — similar in local and non-partisan bias to a school board election — and, with only a moderate time commitment during the traditionally slow summer months, there is a good chance that the soccer moms, college students and warehouse hands would run.
When these regular folk offer their unique candidates, the party bosses, with their smattering of Nominators, will be unable to control a convention with some 500 “dark horse” candidates under consideration. The chances for a few gems arising from the throng is much more likely in a broad civic enterprise such as the Nominator College than a tightly party-and-money-controlled primary.
I, too, am against more power for the government, as I am against more power to national parties, national companies and national labor collectives. I am, instead, in favor of power to each person.
Leave your response!
The JV Tweet
Login
Mailing List
Categories
Tags:
Archives
Calendar
Recent Comments
Most Commented
Recent Posts