Bills

ARTICLE. III.

Our LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

CHAPTER. III.

The PROCEEDINGS of Our LEGISLATURES

PART. I. ASSEMBLY

Each House will:

Section. 3. Prohibit any member from having more power than any other member:

Blocks power struggles and political gamesmanship.

Section. 4. Prohibit committees, seniority, caucuses, filibusters, and the like:

Facilitates lawmaking and impedes corrupt deal making.

Section. 7. Submit their rules for approval by a majority consent of the Voters every 12 years;

PART. II. BILLS

Section. 1. All members must vote on every vote;

Section. 2. All votes must be recorded and published online, except parts reasonably requiring secrecy:

Constituents must know what their elected officials do.

Section. 3. The rules for each and every bill will be the same; and the Houses must pass identical versions;

Section. 4. Any member or group of members may hold hearings, and review, rewrite and amend bills:

Replaces committees with a more democratic process.

Section. 5. Either House may introduce or originate any legislation;

Section. 6. Consideration, debate or voting on any bill will be on a first come first served basis; but a majority vote in favor of a bill in one House shall cause the bill to then be considered, debated and voted on prior to any other bill in the other House except those earlier passed; and a two-thirds majority in either house in favor of early consideration shall allow a bill to be considered before all others in both houses; bills may be resubmitted with minor or major changes in order until a majority of that house decides otherwise in the first, undebatable, vote of the day:

Replaces politics with common sense and fairness.

Section. 7. Limits open session debate to 5 allottable minutes per member or guest not to exceed one hour unless a majority agrees to a longer time not to exceed 3 days; 1/3 of debate time is allocated to the authors, 1/3 to the opposition, and 1/3 to related alternatives to the bill:

Promotes efficiency, productivity and new ideas.

Section. 8. Portions of bills amended in open session require a separate majority vote to be added:

Foils backroom deals and holds members accountable.

Section. 9. All amendments directly related to a bill will be entertained, but amendments not directly related to a bill, or those intended to delay or thwart the progress of a bill or of the legislature, shall be prohibited:

Prevents members from slipping unconsidered spending and measures into bills. Thwarts similar resulting pay backs.

PART. III. The VETO

Section. 1. As it is now.

SPEAK POWER to POWER

Keeping 90% of our current Constitution, foundations and rights intact, The Valentine Constitution modernizes our unaccountable government to assist rather than restrict citizens.

Women, LGBTs, blacks, anti-tax and anti-deficit groups, environmentalists, 80% of America will get what they want most.

Candidates, nonprofits, foundations, protests and fundraisers have failed for decades to fulfill their missions. If they were going to solve our problems, they would have by now. How much longer will you hope that government or Wall Street or scientists solve your problems when they haven’t yet?

Even if your wish list of candidates were elected, what legislation would they pass? They’re too polarized and stalemated, between and within parties, to pass all the legislation needed to solve our many problems, and how long would it take them? It took Valentine 12,000 hours over 45 years! Unless we dictate play, our problems will never be solved.

Left, right and center voters, nonprofits, causes and celebrities can combine their considerable power to get the word out to dictate to candidates to vote FOR RATIFICATION or not be (re)elected.

The hard work’s been done. All you have to do is say you want it to trigger positive polling and they’ll ratify it to get your vote, then we can finally fix everything.

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