Happy 4th of July! Below is a list of election and governmental reforms that I think are needed. The list consists of conservative, liberal, and structuralist proposals. The idea is just an idea to get us thinking about how to get our democracy to last another 250 years.
A Proposed Bill of Government Reform
1.) Congressional redistricting standards (anti-gerrymandering). Problem: Partisan map-drawing lets legislators choose their voters, producing uncompetitive districts and chambers whose composition diverges from statewide vote shares, which leads to greater polarization of legislators and consequently the electorate.. An amendment could mandate independent commissions or neutral criteria, especially after Rucho v. Common Cause held partisan gerrymandering claims nonjusticiable in federal courts.
2.) Electoral College reform. Problem: The president can be — and periodically is — elected while losing the national popular vote, and campaigns concentrate on a handful of swing states. Defenders counter that the College protects federalism and smaller states, which is why this remains among the most contested proposals (I don't nearly care about this as much as some of the others).
3. Campaign finance authority. Problem: Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United treat most spending limits as First Amendment violations, constraining what Congress and states can regulate. A frequently proposed amendment would authorize reasonable regulation of campaign spending. Critics argue it would empower incumbents to suppress political speech — the core trade-off.
4. Supreme Court term limits (e.g., staggered 18-year terms). Problem: Life tenure plus longer lifespans makes appointments high-stakes lotteries timed to deaths and strategic retirements, escalating confirmation wars and making the Court's composition depend on chance. Regularized terms would give each presidential term a predictable number of appointments. This is one of the few structural reforms with support in both conservative and progressive drafting projects.
5. Congressional term limits. Problem: Advocates argue permanent incumbency entrenches careerism and insulates members from accountability; the Supreme Court held in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton that states cannot impose them, so an amendment is the only path. Opponents note term limits strip institutional expertise and shift power to staff and lobbyists — political scientists are largely skeptical, while public support is high.
6. A balanced budget amendment or fiscal responsibility rule. Problem: Structural deficits accumulate because current voters and officials can shift costs to future generations who have no vote. Versions range from strict annual balance to debt-to-GDP targets with supermajority escape hatches. As you know from the budgeting literature, the design details are everything — rigid versions risk pro-cyclical austerity, which is the standard objection.
7. Full congressional representation for the District of Columbia (and arguably territories). Problem: Roughly 700,000 D.C. residents pay federal taxes and serve in the military without voting representation in Congress; millions more in Puerto Rico and other territories lack even presidential votes. The Twenty-Third Amendment's partial fix (electoral votes only) underscores that a constitutional remedy is the durable route.
8. Senate apportionment reform. Problem: The two-senators-per-state rule produces the largest malapportionment of any democratic upper chamber — Wyoming's vote counts roughly 67 times California's. This is the hardest reform of all: Article V arguably entrenches equal suffrage in the Senate against amendment without each state's consent, so most proposals instead redistribute powers away from the Senate rather than seats within it.
9. Clarified emergency powers with automatic sunset. Problem: Emergency declarations under broad statutory delegations persist for decades, and Congress's checks (post-INS v. Chadha) require veto-proof majorities to terminate them. An amendment could require affirmative congressional renewal of emergencies at fixed intervals.
10. War powers clarification. Problem: The gap between Congress's declare-war power and the president's commander-in-chief role has produced decades of undeclared hostilities; the War Powers Resolution is routinely circumvented and of contested constitutionality. An amendment could constitutionalize time-limited authorizations.
11. Presidential self-pardon prohibition and pardon-power limits. Problem: The pardon power's breadth leaves open self-pardons and pardons issued to obstruct investigations of the president's own conduct — questions the text does not answer. Several drafting projects propose express limits.
12. Legislative veto / rebalancing of delegated power. Problem: Congress has delegated vast rulemaking authority to the executive branch, and after Chadha it cannot easily retrieve it case-by-case. Conservative and libertarian proposals would require congressional approval of major rules (a constitutionalized REINS Act); progressives generally see this as hobbling necessary regulation — a genuinely ideological divide.
13. National referendum or initiative mechanism. Problem: The federal Constitution provides no direct-democracy channel, unlike most states and many peer democracies, leaving citizens no recourse when both parties ignore a popular consensus. Critics warn of plebiscitary manipulation and minority-rights erosion, which is why designs typically include supermajority and rights-based limits.
14. Easing the Article V amendment process itself. Problem: The double supermajority (two-thirds of Congress, three-fourths of states) has made the U.S. Constitution one of the world's most difficult to amend — only 27 amendments in 235 years, none structural since 1971. Levinson argues this "constitutional stasis" forces change through judicial reinterpretation instead of democratic deliberation. A modest reform: allow amendment by two-thirds of states or by national referendum with state concurrence.
15. Equal Rights Amendment (sex equality). Problem: Sex discrimination is policed only through judicially developed intermediate scrutiny, which a future Court could narrow; the ERA's ratification status remains legally disputed after the 2020 Virginia ratification. An explicit textual guarantee would settle the standard.
16. Presidential and judicial qualification updates. Problem: The natural-born citizen clause excludes millions of naturalized citizens from the presidency on grounds few modern scholars defend, and the Constitution sets minimum ages but no capacity or maximum-age provisions for any office. Both drafting-project teams at the National Constitution Center, interestingly, proposed removing the natural-born requirement.
17. Election administration and certification safeguards. Problem: The Electoral Count Act episode of 2020–21 exposed how much presidential transitions depend on statutory ambiguity and norms; the 2022 ECRA reform is statutory and repealable. An amendment could constitutionalize the ministerial character of certification and peaceful transfer of power.
18. An affirmative right to vote. Problem: The Constitution never explicitly grants a right to vote; it only bars specific kinds of denial (race, sex, age, poll taxes). This leaves voter eligibility and election administration largely to states, producing wide variation in access and litigation fought on uneven doctrinal ground. An amendment would establish a baseline federal guarantee and ideally an independent agency similar to the federal reserve system for helping local governments to provide elections at a minimum baseline standard.