Amending the Constitution

Key takeaway: To bring about change, we must successfully implement our solution. I wrote this book as a call to action.

While a majority of voters may elect a political party to power, a majority of citizens are seldom satisfied with the results of their representatives' actions and decisions. In a survey in March 2021, 67% of the people in the US believed that most politicians are corrupt. [1] In a later survey published in October 2021, 85% of US respondents said, "the political system needs to be completely reformed/needs major changes." [2]

Those numbers provide a strong citizen consensus that major changes are needed regardless of the political party in control. Talking about problems is a good start but it doesn't solve them. Designing a solution isn't sufficient.

The implementation plan in this chapter describes our strategy to accomplish the conversion to our Collaborative Democracy. In the United States, replacing elected and appointed politicians with Federal Councils and mini-legislatures of the people would require an amendment to the Constitution. Amending the Constitution is our biggest challenge. If we cannot achieve an amendment, nothing else will matter.

Asking politicians to make the change is not a solution

We assume that few existing politicians would be open enough or ethical enough to support an amendment that would end their careers, their political parties, and their social, political, and financial rewards. Although, some may surprise us. Time will tell.

Instead, we anticipate resistance. Every effort will be made to invalidate our Collaborative Democracy, to ridicule it, and even to sabotage it. We anticipate opposition from political parties and from all of those controlled by the power elite in every way possible. We expect mainstream media to support them as it always has. They will do their best to scare everyone by making us look dangerous to America. As Taibbi exposed in his book, Hate Inc., "The news at its core is still a vehicle for advancing elite interests." [3]

Expecting politicians themselves to change a process that is benefiting them personally would be silly. Term limits is a good example. Congressional term limits have never succeeded because the current political process is central to the needs of their political parties and their careers, if not their fortunes.

Every instance of establishing a democratic process such as citizens' initiatives in conjunction with the current representative government has been fought by those in charge. It would be ludicrous to think that we could achieve self-rule by appealing to the moral sense of the rulers in control.

Turning to our politicians to enact any part of our Collaborative Democracy voluntarily would be more than a foolish waste of time and resources. It would allow the current rulers to reject it, to change it to leave them in control, or perhaps even to pass laws to make such changes impossible.

Two methods of passing amendments

There are two methods of amending the Constitution as shown in Figure 17-1. If you want to know the details, these two options and their steps are described in more detail in Appendix 2. [A-2] The primary method is for Congress to propose the amendment, for it to pass both chambers of Congress by a two-thirds vote, and then be approved by the legislatures in three-fourths of the states. The optional method is through a constitutional convention, which hasn't happened since the original constitutional convention.

Figure 17-1

Run our own candidates for Congress

The only way to pass such an amendment by either method would be to elect enough state and federal legislators who had committed to vote to support it. To do so, we would need 1 in 4 adult citizens in the US to vote for our Congressional and state legislature candidates in at least three-fourths or 38 of the states.

As only a third of US Senators are elected every two years, it could take 6 years or longer starting in 2024 to elect enough of our candidates to the Senate. Members of the House of Representatives are elected every 4 years coinciding with the presidential election. State legislators are elected every 2 or 4 years depending on the state.

To understand the challenge of obtaining the necessary votes, we can look at a survey that asked people in every state whether they leaned towards the Republican, the Democratic, or an independent party. [4] We can also consider the voter registration numbers from the 31 states that ask for a political party affiliation. [5]

From analyzing the survey, on average about 40% of voters favor Republicans, about 42% favor Democrats, and about 18% favor Independent candidates across all states. The data from the voter registration records of the 31 states give a slightly different picture. In those states, about 33% of voters favor Republicans, about 33% favor Democrats, and about 34% favor Independent candidates on average.

However, these are just averages. The percentage who favors one party over another is different in each state. The highest percentage that favor Republicans in any state is 57% and the highest favoring Democrats in any state also happens to be 57%. With the exception of Arkansas, the highest percentage of voters in any state that are registered as an independent is also about 60%. Therefore, we can use a model for planning purposes that illustrates the most difficult case for us where 60% of those voting favor one party. In this worst-case scenario, our candidates would need to win 40% of the voters away from each party as shown in Figure 17-2.

Figure 17-2

Option 1 is preferable but Option 2 is a backup

Preferably, we can use Option 1 and pass the amendment the traditional way. We would need to win over half of the seats in 38 state legislatures and 291 or two-thirds of the seats in the House and 67 or two-thirds in the Senate. We would have enough in each chamber to elect the majority leaders. They would appoint our members to the committees and the committee chairs needed to advance the amendment to the floor. Filibusters and other tricks would be useless to the opposition. We could pass the amendment with the required two-thirds of votes and send it to the states for ratification. With a majority of legislators in 38 or more states, it would be ratified. Presidents and governors have no power and are not involved in the Constitutional amendment process.

However, our fallback position is Option 2, a constitutional convention. We would need a majority in the legislatures of 34 states instead of 38 states, a majority of the seats in the House (218 instead of 291), and three-fifths of the seats in the Senate (60 instead of 67) to elect the majority leaders and to avoid tricks like filibusters. Our majority leaders would ensure that the rules for the convention and the selection of state delegates were set in a way that would enable our success. We could then use our 34 states to call for a constitutional convention. In the convention, we would pass a resolution to allow ratification by two-thirds of the states instead of three-fourths, just as they did in the original constitutional convention.

The Presidency

Once the amendment was passed, the President would be forced to comply and to make the necessary changes in the executive branch. However, if we could elect our candidates in 38 states, it might also be possible to win the majority of votes for President. To do so, we would appoint our own electors to the Electoral College in each state. In all but 2 states, if we received the majority of the vote, we would win the electors in that state. The other 2 states, Maine and Nebraska, use a combination of statewide popular vote and popular vote within each Congressional district. That would not be an obstacle.

If we elected a President, then the President could prepare the minds and hearts of the American people and of our allies even before the amendment was passed.

State opportunities

Implementing a Collaborative Democracy at the state level is not our objective at this time. I have not researched the rules for changing the constitutions in any states to determine how that would be accomplished. However, for each state where we had sufficient support, the state constitution could potentially be amended as well to completely oust the political parties from any government influence at both levels of government.