Travis, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
Given our culture and the political environment, both now and in the foreseeable future, what do you predict will be the next constitutional amendment and in what year do you think it will be passed (plus or minus five years)?…If forced to make a prediction, I would argue that between the years 2020 to 2025 there is a p=.25 that there will be some sort of constitutional amendment liberalizing same-sex marriage — at least giving same-sex couples equal rights and benefits that married couples currently receive but not necessarily allowing them to be officially "married".
I do not expect further amendments anytime soon but please tell me why I am wrong. Due to greater political competitiveness, it is harder to overcome the relevant hurdles than before, as there is always someone to fight on the other side or ask for a different version of the amendment. And the so-called "low-hanging fruit," such as repeal of Prohibition, seems to be gone. If I had to pick, I’ll predict some version of a recast Equal Rights Amendment but "nothing anytime soon" still remains a better prediction in my eyes.
I do not expect any constitutional amendments in the next 20 years.
The system is too polarized and all of the big issues that would require a
constitutional amendment (marriage, abortion, equal rights) would be
beyond compromise for large groups of the populace and their representatives.
You guys are optimists…
I think the most likely one will be a revival of the Balanced Budget Amendment.
A constitutional amendment has to be approved by three quarters of the states. This is a pretty high hurdle. I would bet a bottle of your favorite beverage that no amendment is approved in the next twenty years.
As an outside observer, I’d say that the amendment most likely to be passed in the medium term would concern District of Columbia voting rights in Congress. Even that would be quite unlikely, though. Surely anything more ideologically contentious couldn’t pass, except if one party wins a huge landslide on a non-centrist agenda.
Why bother, when a “living constitution” and the right justices will do the job. For example, the Court has already done everything the ERA would have done.
The next amendments will deal with immigration.
How about an amendment that clears up the parts of the 2nd that the ACLU can not comprehend?
I expect an amendment to institute futarchy.
Once Iraq is over, if enough people still care, I could see an amendment restricting the President’s discretionary power to use the military.
I thin an amendment allowing non native born citizens to be President is the most likely candidate. Both parties have candidates they could conceivably run (Jennifer Granholm and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the rule is anachronistic. I don’t think a British loyalist is going to come to America, become a citizen, get elected and then have the US join the commonwealth.
Ooops, sorry – make that 7 of the 10 elections…
I could see an amendment guaranteeing some form of a right to privacy.
p=.25????????????????????????
I’ll let Overcoming Bias speak to this.
See http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/when-not-to-use.html>When (Not) To Use Probabilities
Also, we are currently going the other way. We’d have to have some groundswell against wiretapping, strip searches, etc. A likely event like a terrorist attack isn’t going to catalyze that. We’ve had plenty enough news breaking the other way showing how far the government has stretched existing amendments and I haven’t seen a groundswell yet. Maybe we’ll get an amendment defining privacy as anything that the government or those doing its bidding doesn’t need to know.
sd, Gore won the popular vote, and he wasn’t even popular.
Immigrants – who will increasingly play a larger role in elections – mostly populate those states you cited. Immigration doesn’t hurt Republicans in an electoral college system but it surely does in a popular vote system.
I could see a procedural amendment that did away with individual electors, but probably not the Electoral College, (though I think that would be a good idea).
Electoral votes could just be counted automatically, without the quadrennial anxiety over possible “faithless electors.”
Another possibility is an amendment requiring states to allocate their electoral votes in some way that reasonably reflects their voting breakdown. The all-or-nothing system is destructive. It renders a very large percentage of votes completely meaningless.
Reform of the electoral college system is less likely to come from an amendment than it is to come from a multi-state compact. Efforts are already underway for the big states to agree to give their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote (with the compact to come into effect once enough states to provide 270 votes join.) Because the mechanism for selection of electors is explicitly a state power it will neatly sidestep objections from the small states.
Scratch that one off the list of possible amendments.
An amendment to supreme court justice terms? But I agree with everyone else — it seems like any amendment is highly unlikely, unless it’s of the “I like apple pie” variety.
In case nobody’s noticed, proposals for homosexual (please call it what it is, “gay” is a ridiculous euphemism) state unions were SOUNDLY defeated in almost every jurisdiction where the people get to vote. Its only radical libertines and lawyers eager to create new markets for the
divorce bar that favor extending some sort of state contract on homosexual relations.
As for the idea of abolishing the electoral college, that’s always pushed by idealistic fools and
potential perpetrators of electoral fraud. By fixing a set number of electors based upon proportional representation, it firewalls the frauds made famous by a variety of city machines (vote early & often, the dead have just as much right to vote as the living) from having regular national effect.
I keep hoping for the following:
Section 1. All citizens of the United States have a right to personal privacy, and a secure identity.
Section 2. All citizens of the United States have a right to self-defense.
Section 3. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
I would settle for enforcing the amendments we have. The 4th and the 9th almost don’t exist anymore. Bush seems to think that the 5th and 6th do not apply if we are at war. We are always “at war”, the war on drugs, the war on terror, etc. I enjoy all of the freedoms we used to have.
“I think an amendment allowing non native born citizens to be President is the most likely candidate.”
As a foreigner I just don’t get this. Wasn’t George Washington born a British citizen? And several of the presidents that followed him?
Stephen, the ERA had a time limit. The time limit was extended(very controversial) and some states had recissions(very controversial)but the extended time limit was exceeded. The ERA would have to start all over from square 1.
Wow, I am surprised to see the electoral college get so panned — unlike the prohibition against foreign born presidents, I don’t see it antiquated at all. It serves a balance against regionalism, which the founders feared. You have to appeal to a broad cross section of the nation and just not win by large majorities in a few states. The House was the mechanism for direct representation to represent hot-button popular interests. The Senate, whose members were elected by state legislatures until the 17th amendment changed that 95 years ago, was meant to represent and guard the power of the States. So you had a balance of interests: President national power, Senate state power, House people power. Yes, it was a huge error in American history (the biggest?) to have senators elected directly by the people as state power was no longer guarded and states have steadily lost power ever since then.
If the ban on foreign-born residents running for president were lifted, we’d have the two worst governors in the nation competing for president. I think I’d rather keep it in place.
I have to say that the comments here are below the usual quality. To wish for repeal of the electoral college is one thing, to think that the small states that benefit from being over-represented would go along is just flying into woo-land.
And so many optimistic predictions. Is anyone paying any attention? The proposed amendment that has come closest to passing Congress–several times in the past decade–is the anti-flag burning amendment. And if it gets through Congress, how many state legislators will have the spine to oppose and stand in support of flag burners?
Hands down, the most likely right now, is the flag burning amendment. You should all be a lot more pessimistic.
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