Let’s imagine Congress hired you as a consultant to help them tidy up any Constitutional problems. They are willing to vote for whatever you suggest as long as they think there’d be a ghost of a chance it’d be ratified (so no dissolving the Senate). What would you suggest?
I switched to Firefox just a few days ago from Chrome on my Windows 11 laptop. I had imported all my Chrome extensions into Firefox when making the switch, but I noticed something after doing so. While I was on Chrome, I had the DuckDuckGo extension and a more conventional adblocker on to make the internet tolerable, but I obviously got uBlock Origin the instant after I switched given its reputation. I removed the adblocker add-on to save the memory, but is it worth keeping the DuckDuckGo add-on?
For those who haven’t played the series, most mario party games involve players separately running around a board, collecting coins to buy stars, which they need the most of to win. In Mario Party 9 and Mario Party 10, however, they switched the format. In those games, everyone moved together along a mostly linear board in a car, with the turn determining who the captain is. What’s more, while the older games had a minigame after everyone took a turn, in those two games minigames only happened when landing on certain spaces. Those two games got blasted for this, and Nintendo returned to the old format for all future games.
ETA: they also swapped the currency for it. Unlike the previous games which had one collect coins to purchase stars, in this mode everyone just collected mini-stars, and that was all.
That mode was controversial. In Mario Party 9, the old mode didn’t appear at all, and while Mario Party 10 did have that mode, it only had amiibo-based stripped down boards. That might have made it feel like Nintendo was abandoning the more popular mode. I feel like that mode would have been much more popular if they had spent an equal amount of effort on both modes, designing interesting boards for both. They also might have gotten more support if they kept the minigames in that mode. Am I wrong here? Opinions?
(Sorry if the wording is strange, the post almost got caught in an irrelevant filter.)
Warning: super long post.
From what I understand, the GOP has been wanting to pass the SAVE America Act which, among other things, would require voters to show a federal ID when voting. Dems don’t want this, and they mainly cite two reasons for that:
I can’t address point 1 since I don’t fully understand that one myself, but if we could structure a system that made voting rights at least as strong after it as before, then perhaps that would make such a requirement more reasonable. (Note: there are other controversial points about the SAVE America Act, like how it would be enacted immediately and that it’d ban online registration. Trump also wanted some other things added, some of which aren’t strictly related to elections. More on all of that here and here. I don’t think any of those deserve entire posts though, so I’ll focus on the citizenship proof part. You could probably guess my opinions on those things based on what’s in the post.) For example, if we had a federal ID system that was free, perhaps that could help such people. I tried to brainstorm what such a system would look like by bouncing what came to mind off Claude, and I got the following. Do you all have any comments or critiques? (note: these are my words and ideas, not Claude’s. I merely used Claude to sanity check and help find holes with what I thought of).
A lot of these could be separate bills but I figure passing a bunch of reforms in one bill might help restore the people’s faith in Congress to do the right thing. The main idea would be structuring an omnibus bill to have a net reduction in voter suppression compared to now while still addressing GOP concerns on voting fraud.
My idea for an ID would replace the SSN, be structured after the secure systems in countries like Germany and Estonia, and the federal government would mandate states accept it as an alternative to their normal choice of ID (though only for voting purposes; states wouldn’t be required to use it for anything else). Getting it would be tied to citizenship, so reps could also use it for immigration enforcement. Naturally it’d be free just like SSN cards are.
For security’s sake, we’ll say people will only be expected to carry a simplified version of the ID with them that just has their name, age of majority status, photo, citizenship status, and some sort of (potentially encrypted) ID number for searching purposes (sort of like people are expected to carry around driver’s licenses now). While a full ID would exist with all the info currently tied to SSN, that version would only go into municipal databases similar to Germany’s that couldn’t be merged legally. Any/all checks into those databases by police would be warrant-only (super narrow exceptions may apply if Congress thinks of anything important enough to justify adding them when making this type of bill). If any police or private company checks these databases, they must provide notice to the one they are checking along with a valid reason and what info they searched for. A court order can delay that disclosure if needed, but only for a set (short) amount of time (though Congress would need to negotiate how long that delay could be). Private companies with legitimate reasons to need near-constant access to these records (mostly hospitals) can just disclose access once. There’d be an inspector general charged with monitoring and publicly reporting any problems with the ID system. If possible, ideally the anti-merge provision would have some sort of anti-presidential abuse clause or something that only Congress can override (with criminal charges for officials who ignore it), but if courts strike that down, at least require them to report on how they use it and take steps to prevent abuse of the system. (The main reasons behind this are to avoid giving any one group total access to the entire database and to help protect the data against hackers.)
Ban selling federal ID data to/among private companies with criminal penalties for government officials/executives who authorize it. Also give citizens a private right of action against companies that obtain such data without their authorization.
You could use biometrics at sign-up to avoid duplicate registrations but have Congress put extra restrictions on other uses for those biometrics. We can have hospitals register people for these at birth. We can use mobile enrollment teams that coordinate with tribal offices and the like, have the executive agencies check their systems for verification, and have those who try to vote without one vote provisionally while they undergo a background check of some sort.
I think that could make a good starting point, but there’s definitely more that could be done. I thought of some possible extra terms each side could add to sweeten the deal further, though they wouldn’t have to add all of them to make this complete.
Make election day a federal holiday… Actually, while Dems want it, that might not be enough on its own to boost turnout. I would go even further: mandate all companies above a certain size give a day’s PTO (spread out among the days leading up to election day to avoid a repeat of COVID economic troubles) and give a funding bonus for smaller companies that choose to do the same voluntarily. We’ll say that states must have their early voting for the general election open by a month out (or some other interval) and that the interval employers can use is between when the state opens the general election early voting and election day itself inclusive. To make it fair, make companies make those days off first come first served, and require companies to notify all employees when scheduling opens (with penalties for companies that let managers or manager cliques or something register first unfairly). That would help ensure people living paycheck-to-paycheck could still vote. Why am I not just suggesting a regular federal holiday? Most holidays are to celebrate past events that have little impact on future events, but election days are far more important for determining the country’s future. We could make it more palatable for the reluctant by tying it to patriotism.
Mandate universal voter-verified paper ballots and risk-limiting audits for all federal elections. Most jurisdictions already use paper ballots but covering those that don’t seems like an easy concession. Risk-limiting audits, meanwhile, are an auditing method meant to reduce the chances of certifying the wrong winner while minimizing the number of ballots one needs to count (where possible). Many organizations, including the (liberal) Brennan Center for Justice, have recommended them, but only around a dozen states have adopted one of its three methods. Mandating the other states adopt one of those methods could be a good addition.
Standardize bipartisan poll observer access at every stage, including ballot counting, canvassing, and certification. Combine it with federal anti-intimidation provisions.
Add an automatic voter registration provision tied to the federal ID issuance. If that’s a no-go, give states that auto-enroll people a funding bonus and make those that don’t auto-enroll people notify those people how to register when they come of age. (Again, that’s a backup if the GOP won’t allow an auto-registration provision).
A federal election administration funding guarantee for meeting these federal standards.
Since the anti-illegal-immigration faction of the GOP would probably want to use the ID for immigration enforcement, give immigration enforcement a waiver on the notice and warrant requirements, and give courts a wider disclosure delay window for immigration enforcement cases. To prevent ongoing abuse, make that waiver sunset some time after the ids get rolled out. (Congress would need to work out how long a delay in notice to allow. They’d also need to put both of these things explicitly into the law to prevent this from becoming a political football).
Add an anti-gerrymandering provision, but make it so that it doesn’t trigger for several election cycles (the idea being by the time it activates the generations may shift enough to make gerrymandering give less of an advantage).
There’s probably one that could be made about early voting, but personally, I’d leave that one to the states.
That’s all that comes to mind. What do you think?
Edit: added links
ETA: to be clear, I’m not touching early voting and mail-in voting in this post with a 10-foot pole. I don’t know enough about how those work on the backend to make fair statements on those
Right now, from what I understand, the filibuster helps preserve the status quo because no proposed PR change has GOP support. Even when Dems, the group that has any PR support at all, have a trifecta, they are reluctant to do anything about the filibuster for fear of their opposition using their next trifecta to cause harm. It’s a bit of a cycle. Well, with a PR bill like the Fair Representation Act (along with a ballot access reform bill to make it worthwhile), couldn’t that make getting a trifecta impossible for future parties? After all, unless the president did something so controversial the GOP convinced the Dems to let them remove the president and vice president, them getting a trifecta would be impossible for at least 4 years after a Dem trifecta. Would that be enough time for third parties to spring up enough to prevent either party from getting a majority again? My thoughts are that if it were, even without a filibuster such PR bills would be borderline untouchable. Not to mention it would be harder for either party to simply undo the previous coalition’s actions if they can’t get a trifecta.
Edit: removed some stuff that might have come across as a bit condescending. I swear that was not my intention.
Edit2: Why do I propose removing trifectas being a good thing? Because the stated logic behind the filibuster is to avoid one party instantly undoing all of the other’s work the instant control flips, and not having trifectas makes doing that extremely difficult unless the original policy becomes super unpopular among the electorate
Let‘s imagine they passed the Fair Representation Act (somehow), and that they passed a couple of other bills to address important things that bill missed, like ballot access reform and (if possible) debate access reform. The Constitution spells out the existence of the Speaker of the House, though most of their powers and duties (like being in the line of succession) are just by statute. As far as I know, right now they are effectively chosen as the leader of the majority party in the House, with other leaders being named the Majority leader and the Minority leader. What should be done with these positions in a proportional House exactly? Like, should they keep their current duties? Should House rules be changed with the altered structure?
Obviously any idea that would make the Senate truly proportional (i.e. divvying Senators up by population like the House does) or abolishing it entirely is borderline impossible with that unanimous consent provision in the Constitution, so my idea is more focused on making third parties more viable. Currently the Senate has two members per state, where each one is elected on staggered years with a gap year after the second. What if we expanded the Senate to 6 members per state and elected 3 members each of those elections (keeping the gap year)? The idea is that this would allow more room for third parties and PR in the Senate by virtue of giving more seats than one at a time to compete for.
The catch is that this idea would still require an amendment, but since it doesn’t force smaller states to cede power, it might be viable. Of course, it would only happen if PR became so favored among both the electorate and the members of the time that they’d actually be willing to pass it.
edit: clarity
For those who are unaware or forgot, in the original series, Bulma gave Oolong this candy early on to keep him in line. It effectively acts as a laxative that’s triggered by those nearby saying the word “Piggy.” The wiki says the effects last a month. If you got your hands on some, what would you do with it?
From what I understand, there are a huge number of Democrat-supported ideas on election reform that are nonstarters for the GOP on their own. Meanwhile, while the GOP want the SAVE act (a bill that would most notably require proof of citizenship to vote) among several other things, it’s a nonstarter among Dems as written. Are there any compromises that could satisfy both? Clearly it can’t satisfy everyone, but I doubt anything would pass without at least some bipartisan support. For example, the largest of the Dem objections to the SAVE act (that being not every legitimate citizen can get such proof of citizenship due to the price) might be addressed by coming up with a free federal id system of some sort those that don’t have id currently could get, but would that be enough? How would you handle this if you were in Congress?
(Like my previous post on this sub, my ideas on how such an id could work and some compromises either side could use are in my comment below. Feel free to critique them. I brainstormed them with Claude, so they could use a sanity check.)
Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying I buy both arguments, the sub’s rules just say I need to keep the post impartial (so I don’t think I can call out any bad-faith arguments here)
From what I understand, the main argument in favor of filibuster reform is that it’s nearly impossible to pass genuinely popular (yet partisan) legislation due to the nature of the Senate in the current environment. The main argument against it is that removing it entirely would remove the staying power for legislation, risking making actual legislation just as much of a political football as executive orders are (which would be way more dangerous since they could affect more than just the actions of the federal agencies). How would you handle this if you were put in charge of reform discussions in the Senate?
(I have an idea of my own, but I am not confident the sub rules would let me put it here, so feel free to find my comment if you want to critique that one. Fair warning: I got a little in the weeds when brainstorming it with Claude’s help, but I put a TL:DR.)