[EM] RE: Democratizing the Senate (II)

DEMOREP1 at aol.com DEMOREP1 at aol.com
Tue May 7 13:39:31 PDT 2002


Adam wrote in part-

I agree with Demorep that the abolition of the Senate is the best 
solution.  But this requires a Constitutional amendment, which is unlikely 
to pass in current conditions.  Barring a Constitutional amendment, I still 
see a possible solution, albeit also an unrealistic one.  The Senate could 
vote to reduce the number of Senators needed to pass a bill.  I think this 
would be entirely Constitutiional; the Constitution never specifies the 
number of Senators needed to pass a bill.  The only mention of this is:

Article one, section 5:  "Each House may determine the rules of its 
proceedings..."
-----
D- Also in such section --- *** a Majority of each [house of the U.S.A. 
Congress] shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; ***

---- which only makes the minority rule potential in the Congress much, much  
worse than the math that I have posted.

Current Senate Rules require a 3/5 vote to change them (i.e. 2/5 plus 1 to 
stop any change) --- The 3/5 used to be 2/3 (which caused all sorts of 
disasters).

It will be much easier to attack the minority rule gerrymander/ plurality 
regimes in the State Legislatures -- to get majority rule p.r. State 
Legislatures --- which will then take a very hard look at the ANTI-Democracy 
U.S.A. House of Representatives, U.S.A. Senate and Electoral College (for 
electing the U.S.A. President / VP).

----
For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), 
please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em



More information about the Election-Methods mailing list