Supreme Court Reform

[Virginiá]

All a supermajority requirement would do is make the concern noted by the OP worse, not better.

If neither party can expect to win the required number of seats to unilaterally confirm justices, I imagine they would stop acting like this. There is no point if you literally can't ram through justices even with a "normal" Senate majority. Likewise, there would be no point in holding a seat open because they would know that the opposition would just reciprocate and they don't end up getting the seat anyway in the end.

But before you say my last statement proves your point, I only mean to suggest that there might be a small period after the reform where the parties instinctively resort to old tactics, having not yet been burned by the new system. Eventually the high stakes maneuvering will end because they will know there is no point.

[Virginiá]

Part of this appeals to me since the IL Board of Elections works on a similar principle. It is 4-4 by party and it takes 5 votes to pass a motion. It has worked well to keep an unwanted majority from putting their thumbs on election decisions.

I like the idea in theory but it doesn't work if one side is constantly operating in bad faith. North Carolina is the most notorious example of that right now. They want a perfectly split board because they can force counties to default to 1 early voting site by just obstructing early voting decisions. Obviously this could be solved by having "default" plans adhere to a proportional formula, but still. Not that I necessarily think SCOTUS operates in bad faith, but that the general idea of a split partisan balance for any type of board/court can have its drawbacks. Especially when each side has diametrically opposing beliefs on certain subjects.

Although tbh at this point, that USSC idea could be useful for voting rights. But that is more of an example of how much we are regressing than anything else.