{"id":2723,"date":"2016-12-23T17:40:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T23:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/?page_id=2723"},"modified":"2026-08-23T14:01:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T19:01:32","slug":"all-voters-must-have-equal-voting-power-over-the-law","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Idea (8\/2*)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, America! I have developed a constitutional amendment proposal to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>provide congressional representation to D.C. and the territories.<\/li>\n<li>end the Electoral College,<\/li>\n<li>make the U.S. Senate proportional to population, and<\/li>\n<li>provide for future constitutional amendments by referendum.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is a common theme here: <strong>all voters should have an equal say over the law<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I think this proposal is more likely to succeed in its goals than any other. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here is the big idea. <strong>We are not going to use Article V of the Constitution<\/strong>: two-thirds of both houses or an Article V Convention to propose, three-fourths of the states or state conventions to ratify. <strong>Not going to use it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We are not going to use it because Article V is <strong>not exclusive<\/strong>. The text of Article V does not declare that it is the exclusive means to amend the Constitution, despite the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>We are not going to use it because it is <strong>impossible<\/strong>. Two-thirds of the states are small states, and small-state citizens have for over 200 years given very little evidence that they are willing to give up their disproportionate power over the law.<\/p>\n<p>We are not going to use it because it is <strong>illogical<\/strong>. It does not make any sense to declare that equal state suffrage and non-representation of D.C. and the territories in the Senate and Article V is wrong, while agreeing to use the equal state suffrage processes of Article V.<\/p>\n<p>We are not going to use it because it is <strong>not binding in conscience<\/strong>. Article V provided for high thresholds for ratification in part to protect slavery-protecting constitutional provisions (the Three-Fifths clause, the Fugitive Slave clause, and the continuation of the slave trade through 1808, among others) and in part to protect equal state suffrage in the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>We are not going to use it because belief that all voters must have equal voting power over the law ultimately means that<strong> the people have the inalienable right to amend the Constitution by simple majority vote<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>We are going to do something else. We are going to define a new method of amendment proposal and ratification. At the heart of this process will be a two-phase national referendum initiated by the states\/D.C.\/territories.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This amendment will be <strong>formally proposed<\/strong> by a simultaneous majority vote of the people of a group of states\/D.C.\/territories that comprise a majority of the population of the United States.<\/li>\n<li>This amendment will be <strong>ratified<\/strong> six months later, provided that the states\/D.C.\/territories that did not vote the first time have an opportunity to do so, and that the overall vote remains a majority vote of the people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is going to work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This procedure is&nbsp;as consistent with the principle of political equality over the law as our current institutions will allow for reasons that I explain in other pages. Don&#8217;t worry for now about what other people think, or about how many election cycles this might take. Read more about the process <a href=\"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/?page_id=2858\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/?page_id=2727\">FAQ<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/?page_id=2800\">Read the Proposal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi, America! I have developed a constitutional amendment proposal to: provide congressional representation to D.C. and the territories. end the Electoral College, make the U.S. Senate proportional to population, and provide for future constitutional amendments by referendum. There is a common theme here: all voters should have an equal say over the law. I think [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2723","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":68,"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3252,"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2723\/revisions\/3252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amendmentproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}