If you could introduce a Constitutional Amendment What would it be

[StateBoiler]

-Formalize the rules and procedure for holding an Article V Convention.
-Revise the Order of Succession to remove the Speaker of the House and the Senate Pro Tempore from the list.
-Revise the Order of Succession so that in the event of the vice presidency becoming vacant, it just remains vacant, and the Secretary of State who was already approved by Congress in that role, is de facto vice president.
-Provide for if the Order of Succession in an obviously catastrophic event is exhausted, the governors of all states come together and select the new president.
-If House seats become vacant (resignation/death/taking other office/federal appointment), instead of holding a new election for the seat delayed by many months, it becomes a party caucus/primary that elects the new officeholder.
-Increase the size of the House of Representatives. Not sure what number, but it'd be a kind of deal where you increase their size say 20% while declining their pay and their staff budgets 20% or somewhere thereabouts. The idea is it becomes more representative of the national population distribution which helps the Electoral College while also reducing committee assignments per representative.
-In light of how much shenanigans the federal government has had lately on Supreme Court confirmations, allow for a list over time of pre-packaged approvals by the Senate of say 10 to 15 individuals, and the president if he wants can choose from that list and the nominee is automatically seated on the Supreme Court, therefore no confirmation hearings or political grandstanding. If the president wants to choose from outside the list, he can, but there'd be confirmation hearings. I'm not saying there'd be no confirmation hearings at all, but they would be held before the candidate on the list is selected by the president.

I've been mulling whether I like this and changing elections to every 3 years:

-president - 3-year term, eligible to serve 3 terms (so nine years)
-House - up every 3 years
-Senate - still a 6-year term, but you alternate who is up for election between the 2 seats each time

[StateBoiler]

One more I forgot, provide that the vice-president can have the opportunity as a "day job" be a cabinet-level secretary or run a government agency. (Still has to be approved by the legislature of course.) It'd have to be thought about to ensure no double dipping, but I think it would be an improvement to the VP position.

[StateBoiler]

-Revise the Order of Succession so that in the event of the vice presidency becoming vacant, it just remains vacant, and the Secretary of State who was already approved by Congress in that role, is de facto vice president.
-If House seats become vacant (resignation/death/taking other office/federal appointment), instead of holding a new election for the seat delayed by many months, it becomes a party caucus/primary that elects the new officeholder.

-Why even have a VP then? Just abolish the position.

I consider that a valid question. I would say that the VP is elected by the public, while any appointed VP as Ford was is not. So he had just as much democratic legitimacy as Secretary of State who the Senate had already approved previously. Plus in this era of more partisanship as displayed in Supreme Court confirmation hearings, I don't think Congress should have a voice in the matter. 3 Senators and 35 Representatives voted against Ford becoming VP. Why? Did these individuals ever explain their vote? Why did they think Gerald Ford was not qualified to be Vice President? (Ditto the 7 Senators and 128 Representatives for Rockefeller, whose confirmation hearings lasted for months.)

In the context of modern politics, a VP confirmation hearing if one occurs is probably a party line vote, which demonstrates Congress should not have a say in the matter.

-What if they're independent? The House is big enough that vacancies aren't going to  it up

A special election would be held. It's the rule we have in Indiana.

It's quite infuriating to me of a person elected to a term and he or she near the term's start resigns to accept an executive branch appointment. Now the state is on the hook to hold ANOTHER election.

[StateBoiler]

My proposed amendments would clarify the bounds in which contested elections and presidential  In the absence of a provision to declare the winner of the popular vote the winner of the presidency, I'd like some clarification about what happens in the result of a contested election. Right now a lot of things are completely unclear. If a state doesn't certify its electors, leaving nobody with 270, does the election get kicked to the House, or does the candidate with the majority of certified electors get sworn in? There are compelling arguments on both sides, but this is completely an open question. The method of resolving contested elections, with the House voting as state delegations, is absolutely bonkers and is a time bomb waiting to go off.

It's not all that open. The Constitution required a majority of the total number of Electors to choose the POTUS. So if a state fails to choose nay, then a majority of the ones who have been chosen is sufficient.

I think what Figs was getting at was what if there is a dispute over whether Electors have been appointed or as in 1876, which Electors were appointed. Unlike Article I Section 5 Clause 1 which explicitly grants each House of Congress the right to judge whether prospective members have actually been elected and are qualified to be a Senator or a Representative, there is no explicit Constitutional grant of authority for the Electors to be so judged by anyone. That said, there is statutory law setting out what to do in such cases and in the absence of any other provision there is the Necessary and Proper clause to justify that law.

There's this dispute, for sure; but there's also arguments, never quite resolved, over whether the denominator for determination of a majority is of electors chosen, or of electors assigned to states. That is, if California failed to certify a slate of electors, then while there are 538 electors assigned, there are only 483 chosen. Is a majority sufficient to win the presidency calculated based on 538 (270), or based on 483 (242)?

If they weren't certified, they obviously weren't appointed and the text of the Constitution states ”a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed", so it would in your example be 242 out of 483.

I don’t have it at hand, so I’ll have to go digging, but much of what I’d read indicated that at the time of some debate, this was an open, unsettled question with proponents on both sides.

There's 3 instances of where states did not appoint electors - the Civil War election of 1864 and the 2 immediately following during Reconstruction. In all 3 instances, Lincoln and Grant easily won a majority even counting the uncasted electoral votes, and it's hard to imagine a court at the time not ruling in favor of them if the question did arise due to a closer election.

If as in 1876, it was a majority of votes cast - thereby not counting the votes of states where electors were disputed, the Democrats never should've agreed to the Electoral Commission because Tilden would've been elected.

[StateBoiler]

Reinstate the articles of confederation

I went down the rabbit hole last week and read some law school professor discussion about "when did the Constitution become law/when did the Articles of Confederation cease"?

I was wondering about this question of "do laws passed by the Continental Congress pre-Constitution still exist/still functional unless later explicitly overwritten?" I could not find a hard and fast answer, but read an article discussing the post-Civil War Supreme Court case regarding whether Texas left the Union or not/had a right to. The Justice that wrote the opinion declared no basing it on "perpetual Union". The phrase "perpetual Union" does not exist anywhere in the Constitution, but it does exist in the Articles of Confederation.

Therefore this Supreme Court case while not citing the Articles of Confederation explicitly provides a rare example of something decided that references the Articles of Confederation, meaning they are still in force where not superceded by the Constitution. One bit of that is clearly currently in force is Article I because the Constitution is completely silent:

"The stile of this confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'."

[StateBoiler]

Reinstate the articles of confederation

I went down the rabbit hole last week and read some law school professor discussion about "when did the Constitution become law/when did the Articles of Confederation cease"?

I was wondering about this question of "do laws passed by the Continental Congress pre-Constitution still exist/still functional unless later explicitly overwritten?" I could not find a hard and fast answer, but read an article discussing the post-Civil War Supreme Court case regarding whether Texas left the Union or not/had a right to. The Justice that wrote the opinion declared no basing it on "perpetual Union". The phrase "perpetual Union" does not exist anywhere in the Constitution, but it does exist in the Articles of Confederation.

Therefore this Supreme Court case while not citing the Articles of Confederation explicitly provides a rare example of something decided that references the Articles of Confederation, meaning they are still in force where not superceded by the Constitution. One bit of that is clearly currently in force is Article I because the Constitution is completely silent:

"The stile of this confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'."

I think you're partially misunderstanding that Supreme Court citation. Yes, it mentioned that the Articles of Confederation created a perpetual union, but then went on to state that the Constitution creates a "more perfect" union than that which existed under the Articles of Confederation. Thus, since the union created under the Constitution is even stronger than the perpetual union of the Articles, the new union - which the Texas v. White decision was based upon - must also be inherently perpetual.

In effect, that serves to render one of the fundamental premises of that argument (that the Articles of Confederation are still in force where not superseded by the Constitution) incorrect: that the Articles of Confederation required some sort of explicit overwriting to be invalidated. The government doesn't exist separately from its founding documents; it exists as a thing created by those documents. In other words, the government created by the Articles of Confederation no longer exists. The U.S. government exists & operates under the Constitution - not the Articles of Confederation - & isn't beholden to that document in any way because, in purporting to establish a separate government from the one created by the current Constitution, the Articles of Confederation is an ineffective instrument: just words on paper. It's not recognized by the Constitution nor by the government created under the Constitution. There is no magic about it or formality to be obeyed, & it's not still valid law.

Also, the Constitution isn't silent on the name of the country: the Preamble makes clear that it's being established "for the United States of America."

Thanks for the response.

Here is the articles I was mentioning that was defining when the transition from Articles of Confederation to Constitution occurred.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=278416

Overlong dead link that was breaking page formatting removed. - TF

[StateBoiler]

...that all people will automatically get registered into voting rolls when they come of age or become citizens.

The problem is not people getting on voting rolls. It is governments that do not do their jobs and update their voting rolls for people moving in and out and dying. In theory the census, annual tax records, etc. should inform voter rolls to be kept accurate. That doesn't happen.

[StateBoiler]

...that all people will automatically get registered into voting rolls when they come of age or become citizens.

The problem is not people getting on voting rolls. It is governments that do not do their jobs and update their voting rolls for people moving in and out and dying. In theory the census, annual tax records, etc. should inform voter rolls to be kept accurate. That doesn't happen.

Well that is "a problem" in the sense that voting registration is not automatic in all of the United States.

People don't report they move. (I'm moving in the next couple weeks. I will report I'm moving, but most don't.) Election boards don't update for people moving in or out or people dying. This is a know for everywhere. Part of the reason California takes 2 months to count an election is because they don't do any voting roll maintenance. That's why DMV's is a huge part of voter registration but that's only once every 5 years when you register and update your driver's license. Evan Bayh who was a Governor and Senator from Indiana was removed from Indiana voter rolls because he was living in the D.C. area and never responded to multiple mailers from the state to his listed Indiana address. So he was removed because they were unsure he was still a state resident. You can't have automatic registration for people that you don't know are residents, either on a state or a county level.

You also can't have automatic voting registration until you keep a list of citizens and accurate up-to-date accounting for where said individuals live. Why doesn't the IRS, local school board, local election board, county recorders, etc. talk to one another to have one database keeping track of where everyone is located? I don't know. I know a few months ago I received a letter from city government addressed to the former resident. I'd live in my current house more than 3 years at this point. I wrote on the letter and put it back in the mail "RETURN TO SENDER. HAS NOT LIVED HERE IN MORE THAN 3 YEARS. THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD KNOW THIS."

[StateBoiler]

You also can't have automatic voting registration until you keep a list of citizens, and one doesn't exist. The census doesn't ask people's citizenship status.

About your last point: do you also mean that local census bureau offices do not keep track of citizenship status?

No. Trump tried to add this as a question to the census and it was blocked by the Democrats/courts.