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How would you amend the U.S. constitution?

Started by jimmy olsen, November 05, 2012, 01:47:51 AM

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garbon

Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on November 05, 2012, 05:42:11 AM
throw in FDR's extra bill of rights

Yeah a bunch of new vague rights would be great...
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

dps

Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 05, 2012, 07:55:48 AM
Dump Tuesdays  as appointed election days.  We are no longer an agrarian nation that requires two days' travel by horse and buggy after church services on Sundays to polling places, so it is no longer necessary. 

Since Republicans seem to have such an obvious problem with early voting, either 1) make it a Federal holiday so people can truly participate, or 2) do what the Europeans do and vote on weekends.

While I actually kind of like the idea of election day being a federal holiday, I'm not sure it would accomplish much--most of us who aren't federal workers don't get federal holidays off anyway.

Holding elections on weekends would probably actually depress voting turnout, at least if election day was still in the fall--it would conflict with watching football on TV.

Eddie Teach

Quote from: dps on November 05, 2012, 08:11:19 AM
Holding elections on weekends would probably actually depress voting turnout, at least if election day was still in the fall--it would conflict with watching football on TV.

You're probably watching too much football if that's a bigger impediment than a shift at work.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

CountDeMoney

Quote from: dps on November 05, 2012, 08:11:19 AM
While I actually kind of like the idea of election day being a federal holiday, I'm not sure it would accomplish much--most of us who aren't federal workers don't get federal holidays off anyway.

Holding elections on weekends would probably actually depress voting turnout, at least if election day was still in the fall--it would conflict with watching football on TV.

You don't have to be a federal worker to get federal holidays off, plenty of employers honor them, just like plenty of employers honor MLK's birthday even if some don't.  Even a few more people able to exercise the day as a holiday would be an improvement.

Besides, making it a holiday or pushing it onto the weekend it would be of immense help to people who have to wind up taking the day off from work anyway, burning up a personal leave day to watch their little shits, since most polling places are schools and are closed on Election Day anyway.

The ability to voting shouldn't mean you should have to take a day off to do it.  I know Republicans prefer it that way, but that's fucked up.

garbon

People take whole days off to vote? What dedication. -_-
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: garbon on November 05, 2012, 08:31:13 AM
People take whole days off to vote? What dedication. -_-

Stop hating on the breeders, g.  It's so very Martinus.

dps

Polling places in most states are open at least 12 hours on election day.  Not many people work shifts that long.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin
You're probably watching too much football if that's a bigger impediment than a shift at work.

Sure, but there are people out there with that outlook. 

Of course, if you don't vote because you'd rather keep your butt parked on the couch watching TV (regardless of what you're watching), it isn't anyone's fault but your own that you didn't get to vote.

garbon

Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 05, 2012, 08:36:08 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 05, 2012, 08:31:13 AM
People take whole days off to vote? What dedication. -_-

Stop hating on the breeders, g.  It's so very Martinus.

Can you expand on that logic? On its face it appears quite a leap.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

jimmy olsen

Keep the voting booths open 3 days, Saturday through Monday.
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
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CountDeMoney

Quote from: garbon on November 05, 2012, 08:48:06 AM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 05, 2012, 08:36:08 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 05, 2012, 08:31:13 AM
People take whole days off to vote? What dedication. -_-

Stop hating on the breeders, g.  It's so very Martinus.

Can you expand on that logic? On its face it appears quite a leap.

Fucking people with fucking school aged children that need to take the fucking day off on their own fucking personal fucking time because the fucking local elementary school is fucking closed because it's a fucking polling place.  Fuck.  It's not that fucking much of a fucking leap.

Ideologue

Quote from: garbon on November 05, 2012, 08:31:13 AM
People take whole days off to vote? What dedication. -_-

I know living in Mega City One may have inured you to this, but for a lot of people it is borderline necessary.  My girlfriend, for example, commutes almost an hour each way every day.  (Every day she works, anyway.  Some people apparently still get to work 40 hour weeks.)  Her leave, which she applied for a good two months ago, wasn't approved and she's going to have a hell of a time getting back home to try to vote.

Now, granted, it's foolish to live an hour away from your job, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Edit: but you know, I think she could've voted early.  I wonder why she didn't do that?
Kinemalogue
Current reviews: The 'Burbs (9/10); Gremlins 2: The New Batch (9/10); John Wick: Chapter 2 (9/10); A Cure For Wellness (4/10)

garbon

And they would be better served by a holiday or weekend when they'd have to look after the children? Seems like it would make more sense not to have kids education interrupted and not have school as polling place. :mellow:
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Viking

There are a few suggestions I'd have for the election and election financing laws.

- FCC mandates a public service obligation for broadcasters to broadcast british style party political broadcasts in the leadup to the election. This gives Obama and Romney (plus the well supported 3rd party candidate) 30 minutes of prime time to explain to the voter exactly why they should vote for him or her. This will be like the debates a benchmark for the undecided voter to hear and evaluate. This will reduce the effect of election advertisements.

- Revamp election funding by permitting unlimited public donations to candidates and state and national parties and ending all these PAC regulations and rules. This will return money to the party and candidates which have to look at the big picture not single issue groups like the sierra club or americans for tax reform. This will reduce attack adds since the official campaigns will have to justify any swiftboating they do and those who donate to PACs will have to justify to the public and their kids why they didn't just give to the official campaign.

- Single transferrible vote. In an age of computers there is no reason not to do this. No more tactical voting.

- Primaries. I like the primary system since it gives a "minor league" opportunity for candidates to prove themselves. We would never had Clinton without it. I'd randomize the order. Break up the states into 5 seed categories based on electoral votes. Round 1 go through the first 10 one state at a time from smallest to largest. e.g. Wyoming, then Connecticut, then Washington, the Georgia and then New York in the first round. Then the first super tuesday with 5 states, then three super tuesdays with 10 states, then another 5 state tuesday and then the last 5 in decending order opposite of the first group. This permits smaller and less well known candidates to try and campaign face to face in the first small states. Since the order isn't fixed Iowa's farming policy ceases to be so super relevant.

- Vary electoral votes by turnout. Weigh it at say 50% (or whatever). Does your state have 12 electoral votes today? 2 senators. It now has 7. For every 20% of turnout it gets it gets one more. 5 EV? it now has 4 and gets another 1 if you get more than 50% turnout. Now candidates have a reason to campaign in their safe states as well. Texas, California and New York will now get some presidential love.

- And the wild suggestion. Redistributative electoral votes. Norway has a system of PR in multi seat districts where votes which don't produce candidates but support parties getting more than 4% get moved to other districts where these votes now combined produce a successful parliamentarian.
First Maxim - "There are only two amounts, too few and enough."
First Corollary - "You cannot have too many soldiers, only too few supplies."
Second Maxim - "Be willing to exchange a bad idea for a good one."
Second Corollary - "You can only be wrong or agree with me."

A terrorist which starts a slaughter quoting Locke, Burke and Mill has completely missed the point.
The fact remains that the only person or group to applaud the Norway massacre are random Islamists.

PDH

Having thought about it, here is my list of needed changes:

1.  Make blood sports legal.
2.  Outlaw any gun smaller than .50 cal.
3.  Allow the government to quarter soldiers in private homes.
4.  Make the voting age 40.
5.  Choose the president randomly by the one that grabs the black bean from the jar.
6.  At the end of every term, all politicians are killed.
7.  Free beer at football games.
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-Umberto Eco

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Razgovory

Those Jean Claude van Damme movies are illegal?  Now that I look that up, Van Damme was only in one of those movies.  Also Forest Whitaker was in it.  I had no idea.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017