Comment by AndrewDavis 7 months ago
Even that sounds easy compared to my country. In Australia a constitutional change requires a referendum, with a double majority condition to pass. Specifically it requires the vote in over half the states to be in favour, in addition to the overall national vote in favour.
> this means that in the modern political climate, the US Constitution is fully frozen
Would note that this is a very modern phenomenon, with Nixon having considered pushing for abolishing the electoral college in the 70s.
Yeah, I wasn’t clear enough. The first vote (before the election) requires a simple majority vote. The second vote (after the election) requires a 2/3 in favor vote in both houses.
I’m not sure if that’s worse than 3/4 states since the Netherlands isn’t so politically localized.
That described Dutch system also sounds relatively easy compared to the US model, which requires 2/3 votes in each chamber of Congress (meaning the people-based one and the land-based one), *then* 3/4 of the states (so another land-based check) have to ratify it.
Functionally this means that in the modern political climate, the US Constitution is fully frozen with no hope of amendment really ever again.