Constitutional Amendment Proposal II

We the people, in order to secure a more responsive and representative government for the Nation's future, hereby establish term limits for Congress, provide for the nonpartisan and nonpolitical redrawing of voting districts, and establish a system of direct democracy by which Americans can overturn unjust or unpopular Federal legislation.

Section 1. All elected officials to Congress, both in the Senate and House of Representatives, shall be limited to a maximum of three (3) consecutive terms in office.

Section 2. All Congressional voting districts should be redrawn by the Census Bureau in order to preserve geographic continuity and demographic accuracy; Congress itself should have no authority or influence in the redistricting process.

Section 3. A national public referendum, constituting either 70% of the national voting public, or 3/4ths of all State legislatures, may abolish any federal legislation, spending measure, or newly-created agency or government organization.

Notes:

In their highly interesting book, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America, authors Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein provide a long and well-researched history of the many ways in which America's Congress has failed to provide representative democracy, has entrenched political corruption and partisanship, and has usually failed to provide helpful legislative leadership.

While the reality of Congress' gross incompetence is well-known to nearly all Americans, even the most politically apathetic among us, solutions to the problem are strangely sparse. Beyond redistricting "reform" and optimistic hope for a rebirth of vitality in American political activism, authors Mann and Ornstein unfortunately thought of little in terms of positive ideas to help get Congress - or American democracy, in general - to work effectively. But as usual, the Prometheus Institute has risen to the challenge.

Term limits (Section 1) have been previously proposed by this organization, specifically for their ability to unseat politicians who, studies have shown, become more beholden to special interests the longer they remain in office.

Many of the objections to term limits (shockingly, coming mostly from politicians themselves) argue that bad politicians should simply be voted out if their behavior in office is so objectionable. Such an argument is simplistic and misguided, for two reasons. First, most politicians vote on hundreds of bills each year, making a single judgment on their behavior in office exceedingly difficult, even for educated voters. Second, the job of the Representative is to represent the wishes of their constituents, a job which can be done by mostly anyone, and hardly requires the 40+ year term of a career politician (e.g., S. Thurmond, R. Byrd). In other words, while some popular politicians may indeed lose their jobs to term limits, the balance clearly falls on the side of evicting the many more sleazeball demagogues who deserve an early exit from the People's House.

The redistricting proposal in Section 2 should garner bipartisan support, as such a sensitive matter as the people's voting districts should be kept far from the meddling hands of partisan politicians looking only to secure their party's grip on power.

The national referendum proposal in Section 3 is intended to further restrain the expansion of federal legislation. It is distinct from systems of direct democracy in countries such as Switzerland, in that it is only a negative restriction on the power of the legislature, and not its own source of legislation. Allowing the people to authorize spending measures, etc., is a recipe for ochlocratic disaster; hence this proposal only allows for the annulment of new legislation that is universally-reviled, such as pork barrel spending for bridges to nowhere.

In this age of special interest legislation wasting the public dollars, redistricting abuses creating a polarized electorate, corrupt politicians shirking responsibility for their actions, and few independent candidates who are capable of competing effectively for office, this Amendment is mandatory for Americans to effectively protect and permanently preserve our vigorous democratic tradition. By establishing these methods, we can actively guard against ineffective and corrupt lawmaking while we set the stage for a new century of American progress.

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