[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..."
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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).
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