<story><title>The United States’ Unamendable Constitution</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-united-states-unamendable-constitution</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>johnthuss</author><text>&amp;quot;Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It&amp;#x27;s a statement about each party&amp;#x27;s (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party.&lt;p&gt;The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on many issues, conceding to the other side on one issue in order to get something for their side for another issue. That could be done without any changes to the Constitution. But alas, the middle ground has been lost.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s a statement about each party&amp;#x27;s (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party.&lt;p&gt;This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a &amp;quot;one person one vote&amp;quot; principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2016. Similarly, if you look at Congress, especially the Senate, Republicans have outsized power due to the additional votes that those in less populated&amp;#x2F;rural areas get.&lt;p&gt;The fact is that our Constitution reduces voting rights for those that live in populous urban areas and gives outsized voting rights to those that live in rural&amp;#x2F;sparsely populated areas. California has nearly 70 times the number of people as Wyoming, but they both get 2 senators. Even looking at the Electoral College, California only has 18 times as many electors as Wyoming, despite having 70x the people.&lt;p&gt;This rationale&amp;#x2F;compromise may have made sense in the late 1800s, but it&amp;#x27;s difficult for me to see how this is a good thing now. I wonder how many presidential elections we can go where the &amp;quot;winner&amp;quot; receives fewer votes than the &amp;quot;loser&amp;quot; before people seriously question what the purpose of our democracy is.&lt;p&gt;One other note, the equal-number-of-senators-per-state is the &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; thing that the Constitution explicitly forbids changing by amendment, the last clause of Article V.</text></comment>
<story><title>The United States’ Unamendable Constitution</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-united-states-unamendable-constitution</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>johnthuss</author><text>&amp;quot;Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It&amp;#x27;s a statement about each party&amp;#x27;s (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party.&lt;p&gt;The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on many issues, conceding to the other side on one issue in order to get something for their side for another issue. That could be done without any changes to the Constitution. But alas, the middle ground has been lost.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>colinmhayes</author><text>&amp;gt; even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise&lt;p&gt;Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.</text></comment>