I propose we change the Constitution.

Or, since formally proposing constitutional change is the hard part – over 12,000 amendments introduced in Congress have yielded only 33 proposals – let me rephrase: I suggest we change the Constitution.

I suggest these changes despite the fact that I would have no enthusiasm for lobbying to introduce them in Congress; they’d fail there. Congress hasn't successfully proposed an amendment in almost fifty years. There is effectively no chance that this Congress could achieve 2/3 agreement about healthy structural changes to our government; at the time of writing, that government has been closed for over a month, and Congress has no plan to even open it.

I’d have far more gusto for seeing these changes weighed by a citizen’s constitutional convention, with attendees selected by lot. If such a convention were held (and it should be), and I were asked to speak to it (and I wouldn't be), I would want to illustrate how straightforward and sane it could be to begin reconsidering our foundational document.

These changes are not a list of fondest wishes. They're not remotely radical or even, from a governance perspective, all that ambitious. They would not, for example, introduce a lottocracy.

Perhaps surprisingly, I won't even suggest any significant changes to the structure of Congress here. Most sortition-related ideas focus on legislatures, the most natural analogue for sortition-based deliberative assemblies. I agree that Congress should be reimagined and look forward to exploring those ideas, but I don't think remaking Congress is the most natural next step for the evolution of American government.

But these changes could help us begin to step back from the precipice to which divisive electoral politics have led us. And I'd propose suggest that we could, as a country, be ready for them very soon.

First, and least importantly, I suggest we tidy up. If a citizens' constitutional convention were to propose changes, I think they should genuinely amend, not just append.

James Madison originally assumed amendments would involve editing the body of the Constitution; his original draft of the Bill of Rights peppered rewrites throughout the original articles. Roger Sherman, wielding considerable heft as the only man to have signed all four great state papers of the United States ¹, pushed back on this idea. He argued that this document that had undergone a rich, national ratification should "remain inviolate". Ever since, we've done all our amending by appending.

This decision has yielded a Constitution reeking of editorial detritus. It still lists the 18th Amendment, which prohibits alcohol, and the 21st, which unprohibits it. The 7th Amendment guarantees, no-longer-sensically, jury trials for cases involving more than twenty dollars. Article VII is devoted entirely to ratification and thus has had no use since before the invention of the cotton gin. Similarly, Article I, Section 2 contains the complete original congressional apportionment, going state by state through the number of representatives. "the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse (sic) three...".

Less trivially, that same article and section maintains a distinction between "free persons" and "other persons". Unambiguously, these lines are made legally void by the post-civil-war amendments, but are we really content to leave those words in our most seminal legal document? If I wrote you a letter, describing you in demeaning language on page one and retracting the insult on page two, would you consider that letter insult-free?

I resonate with Sherman's rationale; Congress should be wary of altering a document extensively approved by the people. But a citizens' constitutional convention could assume the moral authority to do so: to remove outdated nonsense and shameful language, and to create a new baseline.

The product, then, would contain nothing but constitutional law that actually applies. Citizens could read their Constitution in an order conceived for clarity, without having to piece apart what was overwritten where. Children could learn their Constitution without having to wade through rot.

And the process would help restore a reasonable claim to the title of a living republic, because living people would have reviewed and accepted or rejected every line of the document that pens our government's structure.

Second, and much more importantly, I suggest that conventioneers rewrite the entirety of Article V, which lays out how amending works. Currently it says amendments:

1. can be proposed Congress or national conventions
2. can be ratified by state legislatures or state conventions
3. can't outlaw the slave trade or levy new kinds of taxes before 1808
4. can't change equal state representation in the Senate

I say toss it all and start over. #3 above goes on the inapplicable-but-shameful heap. (You may have heard, by the way, that the word "slavery" doesn't appear in the Constitution, which is true. But there's not a lot of ambiguity about what the "importation of persons" meant in Article I, Section 9. And Article V consecrated that section further, blocking anti-slave-trade amendments.)

Re #4, I'm not picking the equal-representation-in-the-Senate fight today. Just the we-can-pick-whatever-form-of-government-we-want fight. This weird can't-change-the-rule rule violates the core notion of republicanism: a republic gets to choose its own form. Dropping this rule from Article V doesn't change anything about the Senate, it just means we could if we wanted to; we're not eternally bound to the terms of a 250-year-old political compromise.

That leaves the amendment procedures (#1 and #2). I would suggest, as a start, that all constitutional changes require the approval of a national citizens' constitutional convention. Such conventions should be called automatically every 10 years (for example in all years ending in a "5"). They might propose changes. They might not. Either way, the Constitution would be chosen by the living.

To address constitutional emergencies, Congress may also be given the authority to call similar conventions in other years to consider specific congressional-supermajority-approved amendments.

For ratification, I would again advise against involving legislators and suggest simple-majority national referendums. The combination of citizen proposal and citizen ratification would offer deep legitimacy to any Constitution change that survived the ride.

A third set of suggested constitutional changes would deploy mini-publics to depoliticize much of the federal government while offering new checks and balances.

The most obvious way to do that is to move some of the president's excessive nominating power to citizen appointment boards (CABs), nominating assemblies selected by democratic lotteries.

To that end, the Constitution should create a permanent body charged with overseeing CABs. That body, which I'll call the ABC (Appointment Board Council), would:

• also be selected by lot but with rotating participation
• review all departments and agencies and decide whether and which leadership roles should be nominated by CABs (subject to congressional approval)
• set forth rules and methodologies for CABs

Once formed, the ABC would presumably take a hard look at the need for an independent justice department, for example. It would weigh the need to shield investigations from politics. It would consider the need for independent research agencies. And perhaps it would decide that Federal Reserve chairs should be appointed.

Note that any ABC decision to move power from the president would not involve taking power for the ABC itself; it could only assign that power to other randomly selected citizens.

Separately, the Constitution should specify that judges must all be nominated by citizen boards, to depoliticize the judicial branch.

Finally, given its increasingly grotesque abuse by both parties in recent years, we should subject all presidential pardons to mini-public review.

I suspect most folks reading this are a little underwhelmed. No fixes for the Electoral College? No cure for a defunct Congress? No clarification of any thorny issues around speech rights, gun rights, abortion rights, etc?

My hunch is that such topics would come up in a citizens' convention but would be too contentious to find the kind of consensus such a convention would (I hope) require.

Not to worry. This is not a dream list for an end state, it's a broadly appealing way to awaken a dormant constitution. It's a list of ideas about which I imagine consensus could plausibly be reached in the first citizens' convention, if it were held. It's an increment, not a revolution.

Intentionally so. Rather than a great display of constitutional imagination, what we need now is an effort to create the conditions that could bring our shattered stifled imaginations back to life.

By editing the core text of the Constitution, even just to tidy it up, we assert our shared citizens' authority to chuse choose our government's design. That entails the authority to rewrite our Constitution, not just bandage it.

By updating Article V around periodic conventions, we'd establish a rhythm for reviewing and reconsidering the organization of the republic, ensuring future deliberations over more significant reforms.

And by moving appointment authority from the president to citizen appointment boards, we'd create viable mechanisms for preventing partisan capture of our departments, agencies, and court. In doing so, we'd protect ourselves against significant constitutional vulnerabilities.

Does all this sound fanciful? It always takes a little imagination to believe in routes to a better world. But if the alternative is to hope that things will improve on their own or via the dynamics of conventional electoral politics, then citizens' convention advocates have the much better grip on reality.