I ask you, not as members of any faction or party, but as citizens, to consider your place in this government. For nearly 250 years, we have lived through cycles of division so constant that many of us have stopped asking a simple question. Do we still shape our government, or are we now being shaped by the machine that runs it for us? After generations of attack ads, wedge issues, spectacle, and manufactured outrage, it is time to step back and ask whether this republic still belongs to its citizens, or only to those who have learned how to manipulate its rules.
This project will not be welcomed in every corner of power. Those who have grown comfortable with wealth, influence, and access gained through manipulated laws, private bargaining, and the quiet exchange of favors are likely to see these amendments as a threat. They may speak of stability or tradition, but often what they mean is preservation of their own position. I understand that by putting these ideas into the world, I invite criticism, distortion, and resistance. But if asking citizens to consider what kind of government they actually want is treated as an attack, then we already have part of our answer.
I do not write these papers to persuade you to approve every proposal on this site. The amendment texts and their structure are laid out elsewhere. That is not the purpose here. These papers are meant to explain, in plain language, why these ideas were written, what problems they were written to confront, and what was in my mind when I concluded that something this serious had become necessary. They are not instructions for what you must think. They are an account of how I came to think as I do.
That distinction matters. Too much in public life is written to corner people, pressure them, flatter them, frighten them, or recruit them. I am not asking for allegiance. I am asking for reflection. Whether these amendments should pass is not my decision alone, and it should never be treated as such. That judgment belongs to the people. The purpose of this site is not to replace your judgment with mine, but to create a place where your judgment can actually be exercised.
We live in an age of deep distrust. Robocalls reach our phones. Deepfakes flood our screens. Scammers search for our vulnerabilities. Politicians break promises without shame. Institutions once treated as trustworthy are now viewed with suspicion, and even honest sources are quickly buried beneath noise, branding, and accusation. Information is no longer just something we receive. It is something constantly shaped, packaged, distorted, and weaponized. In my view, that is one of the greatest dangers of this age, because when information is controlled, the mind of a nation can be directed without most people ever noticing.
Human beings are social creatures. We survive through shared knowledge, memory, and understanding passed from one generation to the next. Information allows us to learn what has failed, what has worked, what has harmed, and what has protected. It keeps us from repeating the same wound over and over again. History matters for the same reason. Without it, people become easier to manipulate, because they lose the ability to compare present conditions against what has come before. A people cut off from accurate information and historical memory becomes far easier to steer.
That is why agency matters. Agency is not merely the right to choose between options already handed to you. It is the ability to think, discern, and decide with enough clarity that the choice is truly your own. A citizen cannot meaningfully govern if every belief is being quietly shaped by fear, outrage, falsehood, or tribal conditioning. Self-government requires more than a vote. It requires a mind that has some real chance to reach its own conclusions.
These Citizen Papers are not the same as the Federalist or Anti-Federalist Papers, though they are inspired by the seriousness with which those writers treated public judgment. Those papers argued over whether a new Constitution should be adopted. These papers do something else. They are written to explain how I arrived at these proposals and why I believe structural questions must be brought back to the people plainly, honestly, and without party mediation. They are not a demand for agreement. They are an invitation to think about government as something that still belongs to you.
I built this space so that people could come to one place and state what they actually want for their country without having their views immediately absorbed into party branding, media framing, or social identity. I do not care which label you wear. I care whether you are willing to think for yourself. That is why this site is designed to strip away the features that so often dominate political judgment. No names. No race. No gender. No party. Nothing revealed until voting is closed. The point is simple. When identity markers are removed, the focus returns to the ideas themselves.
I do not believe we currently have a real system that protects the integrity of the information through which people form political judgment. I am not speaking here about censorship. I am speaking about the conditions under which the human mind operates. We all carry biases, fears, attachments, habits, and blind spots. We are influenced by repetition, social pressure, emotional cues, and selective exposure. None of us is untouched by that. The least we can do is create spaces that reduce those distortions rather than intensify them.
So when you consider what kind of country you want, begin with honesty. Begin with what you have seen, what you have lived, and what you know to be true, not with what someone has trained you to fear, repeat, or resent. Read carefully. Notice your reactions. Ask yourself whether an idea brings clarity or confusion, steadiness or agitation. The point is not that every feeling is truth, but that your judgment should belong to you and not to a machine built to provoke you into obedience.
I wrote these proposals because I was once an ordinary citizen who paid little attention to government, as many Americans do. I trusted what I had been taught about how this country worked. I believed the structure around me was more stable, more honest, and more accountable than it turned out to be. Then I was forced into circumstances that made me confront government directly, not in theory, but in practice. What I witnessed across all three branches was not what I had been told to expect, and not what I believed I was living under. It was destabilizing to realize that the country I thought I knew and the one I actually encountered were not the same.
That experience is part of why this site exists. It rests on a simple premise that we are citizens before we are factions. This country belongs to the people before it belongs to any party, donor network, media apparatus, or professional political class. If self-government is to mean anything, then citizens must have a place to think, judge, and speak with as little distortion as possible, and to decide for themselves what kind of government they are truly living under and what kind they want to preserve or build.
I wrote these proposals because I could no longer accept a system in which citizens are told they are sovereign while being given fewer and fewer real conditions under which to think and act as sovereign people. I wrote them because information is routinely manipulated, because public judgment is constantly managed, and because too many people have begun to accept that this is simply normal. It is not normal. It is not healthy. And it is not worthy of a republic that claims to rest on the people.
That is what this project is for. Not to command your conclusion, but to respect your capacity to reach one.
The first paper explained the purpose of these Citizen Papers. Before anything else, I need to talk about the elephant in the room, which is division.
I expect one of the first attacks to sound something like this. “This is the radical left trying to destroy democracy.” “This is extreme, delusional insanity to think that even one amendment could pass, much less twelve.” First, it is really one effort, the Bill of Structural Integrity, which contains twelve amendments. The original Bill of Rights also passed in one sweep because it was needed. To say this has never been done, or cannot be done, is simply playing with words. When those in power want change that benefits them, Congress can move very quickly.
Second, people may call this work radical, but they cannot honestly say that the idea of citizens changing their own structure of government is un American. For some reason, radical has been turned into a negative word that implies a threat, something “extreme left” trying to wipe out what exists. This is wrong. The word itself means "change at the root." America was founded on radicalism. The founders and framers were radicals. They used public essays and debate to justify rewriting the rules of power. I am not doing anything different in principle. I am asking citizens to look at a failing structure and choose whether to repair it at its root. If that is considered unpatriotic now, then we have drifted far from the spirit we pretend to honor.
I have no interest in bringing political parties into this initiative. I am not bringing them in here either. Political parties were not meant to be factions in the way this country uses them. The parties we do have contain factions inside them. It is not a true split, but we have built a strange world where people are pushed to pick a side as if there are only two teams. People say left or right, liberal or conservative, us or them. But no one is truly one hundred percent one thing. Most of us want some things to stay steady and some things to change. That is normal. We preserve what works, because traditions create structure and even nostalgia. We improve and change when something does not work so we can grow and survive in a changing environment. Some trees change with the seasons to survive, but they stay rooted in the same place and connect with other trees underground. Stability and change depend on each other. That is how a real structure develops. Structure does not have a side.
The United States divides everything into sides because it does not know how to be united. Division was manufactured long before this country declared independence.
Civilizations have been divided by class since the dawn of time. Here in America, the roots of that division are the same, but race has been used as a powerful distraction. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion in Virginia against the colonial elite, including wealthy planters and the governor. Those aligned with Bacon were largely from the lower classes and were united more by resentment of privilege and exclusion than by race. They were not innocent. Part of their demand was for the colonial government to wage war against Native Americans so that more land could be seized and opened for expansion, something the ruling class resisted in part because of the cost. During this period, plantation labor still included both white indentured servants and Black laborers, because the system of fully racialized slavery was still developing. The rebellion showed the elite that they could not risk allowing lower class people to unite across social lines against those in power.
The timing mattered. Ideas of white superiority and early white populist identity were taking stronger hold, and the elite used that to their advantage by hardening racial distinctions in law and practice. They extended greater privileges and protections to poor and indentured white people, while increasingly degrading and restricting Black laborers and enslaved people. This created a sense of status and superiority among whites who otherwise shared many of the same economic hardships. Race was not fake or purely a disguise. It became a real structure of law, status, violence, and inherited disadvantage in its own right.
Even so, the deeper divide in this country was still between those who held power and those who did not. Race became one of the most effective ways of organizing that hierarchy, but the underlying struggle was always about control, labor, wealth, and who gets to rule, especially in the South. Even as racial structures changed over time, the broader pattern remained the same. The central divide has consistently been between the few who hold power and the many who live under it.
It was a classic strategy of divide and rule. When a small group in power fears the majority, it keeps that majority fractured by turning one group against another. People become consumed with fighting each other instead of confronting the structures and people above them. It was effective, and its effects lasted long after the rebellion itself.
Even when the country appeared united, it often was not. The Articles of Confederation show what this looked like in practice. Under the Articles, the idea was not a strong united country. It was a loose collection of states that only worked together for war. Each state did as it pleased. There were different currencies. There was no reliable way to fund a central government. Debts piled up on those who fronted the costs. The whole system was vulnerable to outside powers. The founders could see that if they did not fix this, other nations could easily break apart the experiment.
I imagine it was humbling to admit that some kind of central government was not only useful, but necessary. They had rebelled against a distant authority, yet now they needed to build one. The difference was supposed to be this. This time the government would be theirs. It would be designed by them, answerable to them, and built to protect the order and privilege that had grown over one hundred and fifty years. The Constitution was not written by the whole people. It was written by the people they deemed worthy enough to count as persons in law.
The division during the writing and ratifying of the Constitution is the one the country still carries. When factions exist, it allows others to take control from outside of them. While powerful men argue over what they believe they deserve, they throw starving dogs one bone to fight over so that no one interferes.
The Federalist and Anti Federalist debates about structure were also debates about who would control power. The fiercest divisions were not mainly about big government versus small government in the modern sense. They were about which groups at the top would dominate the new system. Different elites were arguing over whose version of power would win. No women, no ordinary laborers, no lower classes were truly at the table.
That does not mean every framer agreed. Some did not want slavery to continue and had real concerns for all people. But it still came down to who held the strings. They were the few among the many and felt they had to compromise their morality and humanity to preserve the control they had, or else risk going back under British rule. Once the compromises were made and the Constitution was ratified, the focus went back to controlling the masses so those at the top could stay in power over a population with very few rights. The Bill of Rights was not applied in practice to the entire population at first. It mainly protected privileged, landowning men. Another distraction would be needed to prevent people from rebelling again, as they did during Shays’ Rebellion.
You can still see this pattern in American politics because it works so well. When those in power feel threatened by social change, expanding rights, or growing demands from ordinary people, the attention often shifts to a targeted group that can be blamed for the country’s problems. Instead of asking whether those in power created the conditions of hardship, the public is encouraged to believe that some outside group is taking too much, using too many resources, or threatening the nation itself.
American history shows this over and over. When large numbers of Irish and Italian immigrants arrived, they were cast as dangerous, inferior, and politically disruptive. When Asian laborers were brought in to do work the country needed, they were tolerated only until they began to assert their presence and rights, at which point they too were treated as the problem. The target changes, but the strategy stays the same. Fear is redirected downward so that people fight one another instead of confronting the structures of power above them. The broad pattern is scapegoating through nativism.
It works so effectively because it becomes normal through what families, cultures, and institutions pass down. People inherit stories, fears, and loyalties, and over time those beliefs can feel more real than actual evidence, especially with biases like in group bias and strong group identity.
It also works because it gives powerless people someone they can actually fight. When people cannot confront the system causing their pain, they are more likely to direct their anger at a visible target that has been placed in front of them. That creates an illusion of control and relief, even while the real source of the problem remains untouched.
This is not unique to any single administration. It is a pattern woven throughout American history, repeated across generations and political eras. The difference in this current period is that those in power have used it more openly by giving ordinary citizens a sense of direct authority over the “enemy within.” They did not only direct frustration at a target. They recruited that frustration into enforcement itself. This is the same basic mechanism authoritarian movements have used elsewhere to turn neighbors against one another.
This is the most important point in this paper. The division that matters most is not left versus right. It is between those who hold power and those who live under it. When we are trained to fight each other, we are fighting battles that were never truly ours. When we choose a side in a game designed by others, we follow rules that make sure we lose, no matter who wins the next election.
This is why the site is designed the way it is. Everything is under the name Citizen. If the world were blind to labels like race, gender, income, or party, what would we really have to argue about. We would still disagree, because humans do. But it would be harder to keep us fighting over identities instead of substance. When people get along there is less fear. When there is less fear, it is harder to control them through panic and anger.
People should treat anger as a signal, not a strategy. It can show us that something is wrong. If we project it onto other people, it only deepens the damage. If it is left unchecked it can be turned into violence, which creates more harm. Real power is not found in violence. Violence is what those in power want, because they can use it as proof that we cannot be trusted. They can say, “See, we told you so,” and then tighten control. That is why peaceful protesting is more effective than rioting. They often provoke violence through intimidation, rubber bullets, or tear gas. People react to protect themselves, and the cycle continues.
So understand this. If you live your life constantly triggered by the hate and division those in authority created, then you are not powerful. You are what they call a flying monkey, or a spoke in the machine. You may feel useful and powerful in the moment, but how will you feel when those in control lose their power. Because eventually they do. Always. Then you will be left facing those you harmed, with no one left to justify your actions. You are not ignorant. You are not a robot to be programmed. You are not powerless. You are a person who belongs to one human family. We are the same species. Only a tiny fraction of our DNA makes us unique, and that should be embraced, not punished.
That is why I built this site. In moments of powerlessness, people forget the power they actually have. You are taught to believe you cannot challenge the system. The truth is, you can. The First Amendment recognizes your right to speak, to assemble, and to petition your government. It is a recognition of your agency and your conscience. That means the many have the power to check abuse when they refuse to be distracted by the conflicts the few place in front of them.
My goal is not to deny you anger or anxiety, but to help transform it into action that is honest, disciplined, and nonviolent. Use your voice, not violence. Use truth, not destruction. Use collective power, not harm.
That is the purpose of a majority in any just society. It is not to crush the minority. It is to protect the rights and dignity of everyone and to ensure equal treatment under the law. When a small minority holds disproportionate power and uses it to exploit or suppress the majority, it becomes the responsibility of the people to hold that power accountable, instead of turning their anger on each other.
I wonder how many people reading this paper believe America was founded because there was a big bad king trying to suppress the colonists. That is the story we were sold. The poor, poor colonists suffering under a tyrannical regime that demanded a new world where “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
A story that became legend and moved millions to take to the streets in its name. What power a story can hold, even when it is not true. You may be wondering why it matters now. It was over 200 years ago, and supposedly has nothing to do with today. Does it not? This country loves to erase history and package the United States as a symbol of great democracy, but in reality it has been the center of some of the world’s worst atrocities, including influencing the Holocaust. It is true. We inspired it. Hitler used the American eugenics program as part of his inspiration. That is why you rarely hear about Buck v. Bell, just one of many horrific rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But I digress. The point is that it is not surprising the United States is where it is today. It has been here many times before. This is the cycle of the country. The division I spoke about in the last paper explains why it was created, but this paper is more about the psychological division between those still trapped in an intergenerational sociopathic society and those who have evolved beyond it.
It began with colonialism. Give a group free rein to take land that was never theirs, strip it for resources, and kill anyone who stands in the way, then call it rightful because power said so. I do not know why anyone treats the framers as wise men above criticism when they came from a world that viewed anyone who was not white, Christian, or socially compliant as savage, less than human, or dangerous.
It worsened because there was almost no oversight. The first English merchants arrived in 1607 to establish a commercial foothold, and the first permanent settler families followed in 1620. From that point, the colonies lived with broad practical autonomy. They governed themselves, enforced their own rigid religious orders, and shipped raw goods back to England in a commercial loop that operated with relatively little interference. England profited from the arrangement and had little incentive to tighten control.
The colonists were essentially like privileged teenagers left alone in their wealthy parents’ house for the summer with access to cash and no supervision. Distance created a vacuum of accountability. In that vacuum, colonists seized Native land, displaced or destroyed entire nations, expanded slavery, and justified it all as the will of God. Add dehumanization, manipulation, and habitual lying to unchecked privilege, and what you are left with is a society primed to normalize sociopathic behavior.
It stayed this way for more than 130 years.
While the King of England may have originally sent them here, it was not a king in the way most people imagine that caused the Revolution. By then, it was no longer simply England but Britain, and the so-called king did not rule with unchecked personal power as some all-powerful monarch in the way people often imagine. Parliament imposed the rules. The king could support them, resist them, or influence the politics around them, but he was not acting alone, and George III had only been on the throne for about sixteen years before the Revolution.
Here is the gist. Britain and France went to war in what became the French and Indian War. Yes, they fought for seven years over land neither truly had the right to claim. Wars cost money, and this one left Britain deep in debt.
So Britain turned to the colonies and said, in effect, you benefited from this war, now you need to contribute. That is where measures like the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts came in. These were among the first direct taxes the colonies had seriously faced after generations of living with broad autonomy and very little financial burden. The taxes were relatively small compared with what people tolerate today, but they hit wealthy merchants, urban colonists, and plantation owners the hardest, and those were the people who had grown most comfortable living with little British control.
They refused to pay and reframed it as tyranny. Most ordinary colonists were not even affected at first. But once British troops arrived to enforce customs laws, regular people began to feel the tension too, and the elite class seized the opportunity. See, they said, look what the king is doing to us. It was much easier to personify power as a tyrant than to explain the role of Parliament or admit that the loudest outrage was coming from those whose privilege was finally being touched.
But here is the thing no one talks about. Britain was not acting as though it had no authority. It believed it was governing within its lawful imperial power because it considered the colonies part of the British world. Parliament imposed the rules, and Britain defended that system as constitutional. The colonists had lived under that arrangement for decades without revolt. So, this was not a simple story of a lawless tyrant. It was a conflict over power, control, and who had the right to govern whom.
I understand there were other elements at play, and this simplifies them. But the main idea of taxation without representation functioned as political language after the fact. The colonists did not break because Britain failed to honor some deep patriotic desire for representation. They broke when Britain tried to impose taxes and tighter control on colonies that had grown used to broad autonomy. Representation became the language of resistance, but the break was triggered when privilege was finally touched.
Then there was the restriction on western expansion. But that too was not just random oppression. Britain was trying to stabilize the frontier after the war and manage an empire that had become more expensive and more difficult to control. Colonial elites did not like being told where expansion could stop any more than they liked being told they had to help pay for the imperial system they had benefited from.
The timing also mattered. By the 1770s, slavery and the slave trade were becoming more contested in the British world, even if Britain had not yet turned against them in any full or consistent way. That mattered because some colonial elites, especially in the South, had reason to fear a future in which imperial control might begin to threaten systems they depended on. If the framers believed there was no chance it would ever be challenged, there would have been no reason to constitutionally protect the slave trade until 1808. They did that because they understood the issue could become politically threatened, and slaveholding interests wanted time and protection.
I am not defending Britain. I am looking at the semantics to understand the mindset behind it. That matters because a societal mindset becomes culture, and culture becomes normal. The colonists believed they were oppressed and believed they could do it better, but colonization had already given them a sense of privilege over others, and that privilege hardened into superiority.
They did not build something better in any clean moral sense. They realized that disorder did not protect wealth, and people were growing tired of being drained by those above them. Rebellion was rising, debt was mounting, and elite interests could see that if they did not restructure power, they could lose control altogether. So once again, they turned against the government above them and wrote a new one of their own.
Fifty-five men took part in writing the Constitution, and only thirty-nine signed it. That was it. A small group of elites structured the lives of millions while preserving a system that dehumanized an entire race so they could protect land, power, and wealth.
It is not to say they were all “bad guys.” Some were shaped by the limits of their time. But the mindset of privilege, and of securing what they wanted at almost any cost, set the tone for this nation and passed down generation after generation. At the Convention, Madison made clear that the structure of government had to protect wealth and property from future majorities. He even argued that one branch should be designed to protect what he called “the minority of the opulent against the majority.” That was not accidental. The privileged elite were building a government meant in part to protect their position from future generations that might try to take it back.
In family systems, this is what people call intergenerational trauma. One generation harms the next, and those children often grow up to repeat the same patterns until someone in a later generation becomes self-aware enough to break the cycle.
In society, this is called historical trauma. That is why this country has been an instigator of so much hate and cruelty in the world. It was born that way baby. For over two centuries, the cycle has continued, inheriting the colonial mindset that privilege is authority and the rest do not matter. It festered and spread into every branch of society, political parties, religion, science, education, the environment, healthcare, race, gender, and any other difference that goes against what “they” consider normal. It created so much hypocrisy and so thoroughly polluted the minds of citizens that many no longer know what to believe and collapse into compliance.
But here is my theory as to why this generation is different. I am aware that many Americans still reject evolution, which is its own problem, but this is not about whether humans evolved from another species or were placed here by a creator. However we got here, we still evolve within our own species. It can be debated whether neurodivergence is becoming more prominent in the population or whether it was always here and we were simply too ignorant to recognize it. Either way, it is becoming more visible, and the neurodivergent mind is often less willing to accept the norm without question. On top of that, crippling justice sensitivity and the need to fight back against injustice are helping forge a new world that will hold those in power accountable.
I am proud to be neurodivergent because if it were not for my mind, I would not have had the capacity to go down every rabbit hole I needed before launching this. If it were not for my justice sensitivity, I would not have had the strength to keep fighting a privileged system that was trying to silence me. I would have taken those feelings of powerlessness and given up. But the level of empathy I carry, and the need to protect people I do not even know, is not something I can turn off. The only way I know how to release it is to try to fix what is wrong.
I know there are many others like me. So maybe not everyone will think this is necessary, but pay attention to who says that and step outside the normal frame for a moment. Ask yourself who they are, what position they hold, why they do not want to make things better for everyone, and how change would affect them compared with how it would benefit you. Privilege is not a class people openly identify with. It is a concept that has to be questioned. That is how many neurodivergent minds work. And that is how we gain “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” for all.
In some democracies, voting is not just a right. It is required by law. I thought about that idea while writing this amendment, but voting should not be forced in a democracy that does not assure the most qualified candidates. One reason turnout is low in the United States is the feeling that we are always choosing the lesser of two evils. It is understandable to feel that not voting is the only honest choice. Forcing people to vote in that situation does not fix the deeper problem.
People do show up when they see someone who inspires them. They also show up when the process feels fair and accessible. Instead, we make voting challenging for many people. No one should wait hours to vote, especially if they do not know whether it will count. Barriers such as long lines, limited polling places, and complicated rules are not accidental. In this country, access to the ballot has been turned into a political weapon. When those in power interfere with who can vote, they violate the essential democratic principle that elections must be accessible to all citizens.
There is no “side” to democracy itself. The ability to vote in free and fair elections is a principle, not a partisan talking point. When a country cannot run elections that are both open and trustworthy, it stops being a democracy in any meaningful sense. If someone is against that idea, they are not arguing about policy. They are arguing against the basic idea that people should govern themselves.
For many decades at the start of this country, you could not vote unless you were a man with significant property and wealth, what historians call a kind of “census democracy.” If you were below roughly the top slice of the economic ladder, you were shut out. The framers did not fully trust ordinary people to choose leaders. They feared that if too many poor or less wealthy citizens voted, those citizens might demand taxes on the rich and policies that cut into elite wealth.
They also did not trust all those who did meet the standards to vote. Not all landowners were educated. In the framers’ view, without education, individuals lacked the understanding necessary to determine who could effectively lead a country. They could easily be persuaded by charlatans and end up voting for someone who had bad intentions for the country, so they created the Electoral College just in case they needed to step in.
We already have five different amendments that affect voting, and we still have not gotten them right. That is because those amendments stated who could not be excluded, not who could be included. Women marched, organized, and fought for generations to gain the vote. Black Americans risked their lives to secure and exercise it. We also created the Voting Rights Act to reinforce the latter, and that has been chopped to pieces and remains under constant threat.
In most democracies, there is some kind of strong national framework or commission that sets basic rules and standards for elections. Here, each state controls its own process, even when it comes to choosing national leaders. States must run their elections for state offices, and that makes sense. You can move if you truly cannot live with a state’s choices, at least in theory. But you cannot easily move out of your country, give up your citizenship, and leave your family just to escape unfair national rules. When a patchwork of state systems decides who leads the entire nation, people in some places can have their voice diluted or blocked in ways they cannot escape.
This leads to gerrymandering. When politicians draw their own district maps, they can choose their voters instead of voters choosing them. Winner take all systems reward this manipulation because drawing lines carefully can almost guarantee victory for one side. We pay state legislators and members of Congress to serve us, not to spend years carving up maps so that voters lose meaningful choices. Public schools, transportation, health care, and infrastructure all need attention. Instead, whole sessions of government are wasted figuring out how to win with the fewest actual voters needed. If you have to cheat the map to keep your seat, that should raise serious questions about whether you deserve to keep it.
The only way to cure this problem is to create a central voting system that is long overdue. Our electoral system is still stuck in 1781, which benefited slaveowners and was part of the compromise. That compromise was wrong on so many levels, and leaders should have amended it years ago. Just because slavery no longer exists does not mean this country should not make up for it. Amending it shows that everyone is truly equal.
This amendment moves us toward a fairer foundation. It accepts that we need some basic protections against abuse, but it insists that those protections cannot be used as an excuse to keep people out. It pushes for clearer standards, more consistent national rules for national offices, and an electoral structure that values every vote instead of treating millions of them as wasted.
But the problem is not just allowing people to vote. It is also how those votes are counted. In a winner take all system, a slim majority can end up with all the power, while everyone else gets nothing. For many voters, it feels like their ballot disappears if their preferred candidate does not come in first. When people believe their vote does not matter, they are less likely to participate. By contrast, proportional and representative systems try to ensure that a party or viewpoint that has, for example, 20 percent of the vote gets roughly 20 percent of the seats. In a majority of the democratic world, some form of proportional representation has become the standard, especially in large, diverse countries. It gives people a reason to vote even if they are not in the local majority, because their preferences still translate into real representation.
A shift toward more proportional and representative approaches has already started. Some states and cities have begun using them. It may take time to adjust to a new approach, but Americans are adaptable. We already adjust to new laws, technologies, and systems every year. Elections should be no different. Imagine the energy we could free up if legislatures across the country did not spend so much time manipulating district boundaries and chasing narrow wins. Right now, too much taxpayer funded time goes to strategy about how to stay in power, not to solving problems for the people who pay those taxes.
The most important aspect of this amendment is implementing oversight. The current FEC is a joke. It was built with six seats split evenly between the two parties, and that split requires four votes to take any meaningful action. Neither party is willing to cross sides. Since 2006, deadlocked votes have consistently ended in dismissals, which are wins for whoever wants the case dropped. The FEC’s own nonpartisan staff recommended investigations into 59 alleged coordination violations after Citizens United. The commission authorized seven. One commissioner, defending this structure, told Congress it was designed that way on purpose, calling the even split the most important structural feature of the agency. He was defending a design that works exactly as this country does. When divided, nothing can change and no oversight can take hold.
The commission this amendment creates is structured differently on purpose. Seven members instead of six eliminates the institutional tie. A presidential appointment with a two thirds Senate confirmation threshold raises the bar for pure patronage picks. Ten year staggered terms mean no single administration can stack the team. At least one member must be genuinely non affiliated, meaning no elected office, no lobbying, and no party leadership in the prior decade.
No enforcement body is immune from political pressure, and this paper will not pretend otherwise. But there is a difference between a body that can be pressured and one that is structurally designed to do nothing. The current FEC is the latter. That is not a flaw someone failed to notice. It is a feature Congress built and has refused to fix for fifty years.
With a functioning commission and central rules, we can abolish the Electoral College, making sure no one interferes or tries to influence voters.
I think the hardest part of this amendment, though, was trying to find a way to break the false narrative of voter fraud. I had to find a way that could not be exploited, which is pretty disturbing in itself. But that is where we are in this country. The whole concept of voter fraud is a little insane. Do we really think somebody cares that much that they are going to commit a felony just so they can vote? A vote that might not even count? We have some of the lowest voter turnout rates, but we believe people are going to turn out to commit fraud? I do not know what is more surprising, that people fell for that or that someone came up with a lie to convince them.
See? This is a problem with winner take all. It becomes a battle of egos where people have to come up with excuses for why they lost. Whatever happened to being the bigger person?
I chose a voter ID because many countries already use some version of a poll card and because it fits naturally with automatic registration. A voter card belongs to the person, not the state line, so when a citizen moves, their right to vote follows them instead of restarting at every new address.
My guess is someone somewhere will claim this is not possible with the current budget. But guess what? This saves taxpayers all the money it costs to fight pointless litigation over voter fraud, so it evens itself out. Easy peasy, people.
It is easy to believe that nothing will change, so why bother? But the truth is that systems change when people insist on it and when they are given tools that make their effort matter. This amendment starts the chain of change. If it passes, your vote will matter more than it does today and will be the first step toward getting democracy back to where it is meant to be.
I have avoided mentioning political parties on this website because it will automatically trigger assumptions that I have some agenda favoring one side, and I do not. I honestly could not care less about parties, but other people do, which is why there is an amendment for them.
I currently hold no political affiliation. I never truly understood why we had parties. I do want to be transparent and honest, though, so when I have voted, it was usually for the Democratic candidate.
But to me, that was because it felt like the lesser of two evils, not because I chose to be a Democrat. It was never about party. It was about the candidates.
What platform were they running on? Who were they as people? Just as I need to understand how structures function, I also need to understand people, and that has been a personal mission of mine.
For a long time, it was my life goal to become a criminal psychologist because I wanted to profile for the FBI. Even though I chose a different path, I never stopped studying psychology. I have taken more courses in abnormal and social psychology than most people probably do in a lifetime. On top of that, I also study genetics and other modalities to help explain personality, behavior, and action.
What does this have to do with political parties? I needed to understand why people choose a party to begin with. In this country, it really is not about the party. It is about ideology.
Back in 2017, psychologist John Bargh ran an experiment in which conservatives were asked to imagine they had been given a superpower. One group could fly. The other was completely safe from physical harm. Afterward, he measured whether their views shifted. Only those who imagined being free from harm became more liberal, at least temporarily.
When people feel safe, their minds open and grow. When they feel threatened, fear locks them down and pushes them into survival mode. This matters because, if you read Paper No. 3, you know we have inherited a societal trauma rooted in fear.
It makes sense. Structure and the preservation of tradition often feel safer than change and the uncertainty that comes with it. But, as I said in Paper No. 2, one cannot survive without the other. Forcing people to choose a side never benefits anyone.
I truly do not think anyone could seriously argue that the biggest problem facing America is not division. I have talked about it already, and I will probably keep talking about it throughout all of these papers. But this problem is made worse by the fact that we only have two parties. What really shocked me, though, was when I came across a website for the United States Embassy in Denmark stating that America is a two-party system. The government wrote that. I was shocked. Where does it say anywhere that America is a two-party system? The Constitution does not declare that as fact. The Federalist Papers often warned about the danger of factions. President Washington was the only president who did not run under a political party, and he did that on purpose because he was so strongly against the idea of factions.
There is no rule or law that says America can only have two parties. Instead, those two parties created laws, barriers, and rules that make it far harder for other parties to compete. Why? Because more parties mean more values and concerns being represented, and that makes division harder to maintain. Even though I do not care much about parties themselves, I do understand the function they serve. Simply put, most people do not have the time to research every single candidate in every election. How many of you have thoroughly researched a council member in a district that is not even yours? Most people do not. Instead, they vote for the person who represents their party.
But here is where the problem begins. When people are forced to conform to one of two parties, those parties begin forming factions within themselves. What we really have is two parties with multiple subparties, and people are pushed to align with one of them even when they do not actually agree with its values.
This first became a real problem in the early nineteenth century, when the Democratic-Republicans were in a committed relationship. Thomas Jefferson was elected under that party. But it began weakening once it was overtaken by regional loyalties, personal rivalries, and competing interests rather than any truly unified vision. And like most bad breakups, the split left behind resentment that has shaped American politics ever since, with both sides still fighting over custody of the country to this day.
But the parties themselves are not the same as they once were. The Democratic Party of the nineteenth century largely supported or tolerated slavery and later resisted many civil rights reforms, while the Republican Party was founded in the 1850s as the major antislavery party. Over the twentieth century, especially through the New Deal and then the civil rights era, the parties underwent a major realignment. Democrats became more associated with labor, federal intervention, and civil rights. That shift alienated many segregationist Southern Democrats, some of whom became Dixiecrats first and later Republicans. The Republican Party then increasingly absorbed conservative Southern voters and developed the modern coalition people associate with it now.
The parties did not switch overnight, but over time their coalitions and priorities realigned so dramatically that the Democrats of the nineteenth century do not map cleanly onto the Democrats of today, and the same is true of Republicans.
But just like parents who may align in the moment to control their children, the two major parties have still united in one important way by keeping out other parties that try to compete.
As of January 2025, there were at least 55 distinct ballot-qualified political parties in the United States and 238 state-level parties. But not all of them are allowed on the ballot in enough places to compete meaningfully. The most broadly recognized minor party was the Libertarian Party, which was ballot-qualified in 38 states. The Green Party qualified in 23, and the Constitution Party in 12. Most of the rest qualified in 10 states or fewer.
That is because each state has its own rules for who can appear on the ballot, whether as a party or as an independent candidate. So anyone trying to compete nationally has to navigate 50 different systems, deadlines, and requirements. In practice, that takes an enormous amount of time, money, and organization. In many states, candidates must also pay filing fees, and in some cases those costs can reach into the thousands of dollars depending on the office. That means a person often needs privilege, major backing, or both just to get through the door. That is not much of a democracy. It starts looking far more like an oligarchy, where the same people stay in power because the barriers to challenge them are built into the structure itself.
We are a republic, which means representatives are supposed to reflect the people as they exist now. But that is not really what happens. Most politicians come from a narrow slice of society, and many younger adults cannot realistically run for national office while trying to survive the demands of ordinary adult life in their thirties and forties. When even getting on the ballot can cost thousands of dollars in some places, representation starts to look less like public service and more like a gated institution.
On top of that, even if you do get on the ballot, you still have to find money to campaign after spending so much just to get there. What kind of system is that?
Two-party dominance is actually unusual compared with many democracies, where multiple parties compete more openly for representation. Even in those systems, dominant parties can still emerge through rhetoric, money, media influence, or corruption. That is exactly what happened here.
The deeper problem is not that parties exist. The problem is when the rules are structured to protect the dominant parties and make meaningful competition nearly impossible. When ballot access law become so burdensome that they shut out voters, candidates, and parties from fair participation, they cut against democratic principles and burden the rights of association and political participation under the first amendment.
The opposite problem also matters. A constitutional system should not be allowed to empower parties whose purpose is to dismantle constitutional order itself. The Constitution protects freedom of religion. That is not a partisan preference. It is a structural principle. But when political movements openly work to erase foundational constitutional boundaries, such as the separation between church and state, they are no longer just debating policy. They are betraying the constitutional structure that protects freedom for everyone else. It is not treason in the narrow legal sense, but it is a direct attack on the framework of constitutional liberty, and too often it is tolerated because it brings in money and power.
That is why we need a stronger commission, which the first amendment addresses, so we can ensure that political parties and candidates are not violating the rules and that new parties and candidates can actually compete.
Either way, if parties have to create rules and laws to keep others from entering, it is because they know they are not performing well enough to keep people voting for them on their own. They do not want to change, so instead they pressure people to change their values and views to fit the party narrative. That is not representation. That is control.
We are not a communist country, so we should stop acting like one.
I really do not think I need to explain much about this amendment or where my head was with this one, because I am pretty sure it is in the same place as most Americans, or at least 99 percent of them.
The Supreme Court has made some horrendous decisions over the years, and Citizens United was definitely one of them.
I do not know if I have ever heard anyone truly defend it. At most, you get something like, “Well, it is questionable, but the Court decided it.”
A business corporation should never be able to use the First Amendment to leverage power.
The Bill of Rights represents individual rights, meaning the rights of actual people. The First Amendment was meant to protect freedom of conscience and give people the right to speak their minds and tell their government what is wrong without fear of punishment. A business does not have a conscience. That is the simplest way to look at it. Even if someone tries to argue that a business can have moral purpose, that still does not solve the problem, because plenty of nonprofits in this country can also cross that line.
The United States is an outlier in how much unlimited outside money it allows into politics, and super PACs are one of the clearest examples of that. Why? Because any logical person, and probably even most children, know that money corrupts politics. Dark money is not properly tracked. People do not know where it is going or how it is being spent, and it intentionally crushes the ability of anyone without money to run for office. Now, to be fair, social media has changed some of that dynamic, but corporations still spend billions of dollars to get their preferred candidates into power so they can keep doing harmful things to the environment, to the public, and to whatever laws stand in their way. The only people who suffer are the actual individuals.
One thing I included in this amendment, which a few states do and many countries do, is public financing. Basically, the government provides a set amount of funding for each candidate. They receive a certain amount to campaign because that is part of the point of public service. We want people who actually want to run government and serve the people. Campaigning takes time, but it should not be driven by private wealth or the wrong motives. The way to start fixing that is to get rid of super PACs.
Super PACs are not the whole machine, but they are part of the same influence network that funds strategic test cases and helps manufacture the constitutional fights that keep reaching the Supreme Court. The fact that the Supreme Court is even weighing ideas like whether big oil should be shielded from environmental disaster liability is insane. How can people trust a Court when that Court may itself be tainted by money, even if it is not supposed to be? Just because the justices are not elected does not mean they cannot be influenced, especially when five people can effectively reshape constitutional meaning for the entire country. They determine what people are allowed to do, and especially what businesses are allowed to do.
You cannot tell me Citizens United was a sound judicial decision. There is no rational basis for it. What we do have are judges who were later shown to be receiving gifts from billionaires. If one uses simple Socratic reasoning, it becomes hard to believe our Supreme Court is as moral as it pretends to be. And what did Congress do about it? Nothing. Because the ruling benefits them too.
The bottom line is that there is nothing anyone can say that would convince a rational person that unlimited money flowing toward politicians is ever a good idea. Maybe those super PACs could take that money and pay taxes instead of paying politicians. Then we could start creating more jobs, repairing infrastructure, strengthening protections and security, and providing better healthcare and education. You know, the normal things government is supposed to be taking care of.
It may seem strange that the Constitution does not forbid people with serious criminal records from running for president. Legally, a presidential candidate only has to be a natural born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident for 14 years. That means even a convicted felon can run and be elected, because the Constitution sets no “good conduct” test for the office.
I do not believe the Framers simply forgot about character. I think they assumed that no people in their right minds would ever choose a leader whose life showed obvious, open contempt for basic morality. They expected that both voters and the electors who actually choose the president would filter out the worst candidates and elevate “characters preeminent for ability and virtue.” For most of our history, immorality was often hidden and only became public as scandal later. What is new in our time is that we have openly tolerated, even celebrated, visible corruption and cruelty as acceptable traits in our highest office.
Some things should not have to be written into law because they are basic principles. You should not need a statute to know that a leader must tell the truth, respect others as human beings, and honor the offices they hold. The Founders tried to build safeguards to stop dangerous demagogues from rising to power if the public was swept away by passion. But in a two party system that can capture electors and bend institutions to serve party interest, those safeguards have largely failed. The deeper question is what kind of people are we willing to trust with power over all of us?
A healthy republic needs leaders with a certain minimum character. A good leader can feel empathy without being ruled by emotion. They can separate their personal beliefs from their public duty. They respect the law and the Constitution, and they have actually read and wrestled with them. They do not run on hatred and fear. They do not treat other human beings as disposable tools.
I do not say this as someone naïve about human nature. Everyone has a dark side. My concern is not about perfection, but about self awareness, intent, and the pattern of a life. For over two decades I have studied how people show who they really are, often not in what they say, but in what they avoid saying, in the innuendo, in how they act when no one is watching. I have a deep distrust of hardened liars, not because people never make mistakes, but because the refusal to admit wrong and make it right is where dishonesty becomes dangerous. When someone creates an injustice, the test of character is whether they allow justice to proceed even if it costs them personally, or whether they will do anything to block accountability.
This is why sociopathy, in the broad social sense, matters so much in politics. I am not speaking here as a clinician or diagnosing anyone. I am talking about what I call “social sickness”. It is patterns of behavior where a person’s choices repeatedly harm others and they simply do not care. A certain kind of leader can detach from the pain they cause, sacrifice the well being of others, and feel nothing but the thrill of winning. Those traits can sometimes make a person effective in cut throat business. But in government, they are toxic. When you put a sociopathic mindset in charge of a nation, that mindset trickles down. A leader who governs through fear builds a fearful society. A leader obsessed with control builds a culture of control. A leader who lies as a way of life teaches everyone that truth does not matter.
Some have suggested psychological testing for candidates, just as police officers must pass tests to screen out people likely to abuse power. On paper, that sounds fair. In reality, in a deeply divided two party system, any such test would become just another weapon. Each side would try to brand the other as “unfit” based on a process it does not trust. So instead of pretending there is a neutral test that cannot be corrupted, these amendments rely on clearer, structural standards that voters can understand and enforce. The people still must judge, but they must be given better tools and clearer lines.
Age is one of those lines. We already accept a minimum age for the presidency, based on the idea that you need some maturity to run a country. At the same time, we know from science that many forms of cognition—processing speed, flexibility, the ability to handle complex new problems—tend to decline with age, especially after 70. Our own system sets a normal retirement age around 67 because we recognize that most people should not be working full time much longer than that. Yet we have drifted into electing presidents in their late 70s and even 80s, even though the median age of presidents at their first inauguration has historically been in their mid 50s.
This is not about disrespecting elders or pretending that no older person can be wise. It is about representation and risk. I’ve said it before; we are a representative republic. Our leaders are supposed to reflect and understand the dominant working age generation, not stand far above it. Today the median age of Americans is in their mid 40s, yet our presidents are often three decades older. When someone with very few years left in life holds immense power, they may never personally live with the long term consequences of their choices. That is a reason to put reasonable limits on when one can serve in such an office.
After 250 years of a mostly male, often insular ruling class, it is also fair to ask what kind of care we expect from those in charge. I am not arguing that only women can lead well or that men cannot be compassionate. I am saying the kind of leader we need should treat the country the way a healthy parent treats a child. You do not want your child to be a bully, so you do not bully other nations. You want your child to have health care and education, so you work to provide them broadly. You protect your child fiercely when others harm them, but you also discipline them when they do wrong, because you love them enough to tell them the truth.
All of this is why the Candidate Qualifications amendment exists. It saddens me that we have to write into law what should be obvious. People who lead a free nation must meet basic standards of character, mental fitness, and responsibility. But in a time when parties will excuse almost anything if it benefits their side, we can no longer rely only on unwritten norms.
These amendments are not about creating perfect leaders. They are about drawing clear boundaries that guard those in power from its worst impulses. It’s so that the citizens of the United States are never again asked to choose between their country and their conscience.
What can I say about the judicial system of this country that I have not already said in a 172-page paper? In that paper, I had to be restrained. I had to avoid saying what I really thought. Here, I will not be so kind.
The American judiciary was sold to the public as the least dangerous branch, but that illusion did not last long. It only took a few years for the courts to begin expanding their own authority, and once that door opened, the country never seriously closed it again. Instead of correcting the imbalance, those in power learned how to use it.
It did not take generations for the problem to show itself. It took a little over a decade. Marbury v. Madison became the turning point, not because judicial review came out of nowhere, but because the Court asserted a role that would grow far beyond anything ordinary people were ever told to expect. Congress had chances to respond to the growing imbalance and never truly did. Instead, it adapted to it, worked around it, and eventually benefited from it.
The moment judges became leverage, whether through delayed confirmations, ideological appointments, or court-packing threats, the judiciary became openly political. The truth is, it probably always was. The only difference is that now the performance is harder to hide.
And while all of this was happening, the system became more complex, more bloated, and more inaccessible. Rights are constantly violated. Rules are constantly reinterpreted. More law gets stacked on top of broken law until the system becomes too convoluted for ordinary people to navigate and too overloaded for courts to manage honestly. Instead of fixing that, Congress handed the Supreme Court even more discretion to avoid cases when the Court fails to do its job.
The highest court in the country is also the most insulated. The Supreme Court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases that reach it, yet its members are treated as if they carry the whole republic on their backs. They are the highest-paid judges in the country, they work less than nearly every other judge, and still justice is delayed while the public is told to accept the backlog, the secrecy, and the inaction as normal.
But courts are not some side institution. They are the anchor of government. When public trust in the courts starts to collapse, that is a warning sign for the country itself. People can survive disappointment in politicians. They cannot survive long in a society where they no longer believe wrongs will be corrected by law. Once justice becomes unreachable, instability follows.
Part of the reason trust fails is because the judiciary is wrapped in secrecy. The public knows too little about the people placed on the bench, too little about how complaints are handled, too little about patterns of misconduct, and too little about whether anyone is meaningfully reviewing the reviewers. That is not accountability. That is insulation. If complaints remain hidden, then at the very least there must be an independent structure with real access, real review, and real public responsibility.
That is why these amendments matter. They are not about punishing courts. They are about finally placing the judiciary inside the same logic of checks and balances the rest of government is supposed to live under. Judicial commissions, independent review, clearer standards, public accountability, and structural limits are not attacks on the rule of law. They are what make the rule of law possible.
Terms were one of the hardest issues for me. I understand why some countries allow long terms or even life tenure, because consistency matters. But those systems usually come with retirement ages, review structures, or other safeguards. In this country, we keep the insulation without the balance. We cannot trust Congress to remove judges when it refuses to act even in the face of obvious misconduct. So if terms remain long, there must be stronger protections around precedent, review, ethics, education, and judicial capacity.
Judges are not gods. They are not machines. They are human beings making decisions that shape human lives. If the law is allowed to detach from the actual damage it causes, then it stops being justice and becomes power dressed in formal language. And if that is all the judiciary becomes, then we may as well admit we are no longer being governed by law at all.
Every American judge starts out as an attorney. Most spend most of their careers practicing law before they ever take the bench. There is no special “judge school” that turns them from advocate into neutral decision-maker. That may sound like a natural career step, but in an insulated profession, it can also create a sense of superiority, loyalty to the industry, and ego.
At the federal level, there are barely any real qualifications beyond being chosen by political power. A judge is picked by a political leader, then nominated and approved depending largely on which party is in control. The hearing that follows is often more performance than real evaluation. A nominee can dodge questions, answer badly, or show obvious bias and still get confirmed if the votes are there. A qualified nominee can also be blocked for purely political reasons. That is not vetting. That is theater.
There is no real public review of their record. The people do not meaningfully evaluate their rulings. Complaints from their years as attorneys may have been dismissed, buried, or quietly handled by a state bar before they ever reached the bench, and the public would never know. One hearing, one vote, and that is it.
There is also no required continuing education. If new studies come out about trauma, mental health, cognitive bias, or the effects legal process has on ordinary people, judges are not required to engage with any of it. There are no regular check-ins by the people who appointed them and no meaningful review by the people forced to live under their rulings. A judge can make harmful decisions for years while staying almost completely insulated from the damage.
The problem also runs deeper than politics. Law is not just a job. It is its own way of thinking. Law school teaches people to “think like a lawyer,” and years of practice reinforce that mindset. Judges come from the same profession that trained them, rewarded them, and taught them how to see the world. So when questions come up that affect the legal profession, they are naturally more likely to think about how it affects their own group rather than people outside of it.
That does not just shape outcomes. It shapes the law itself. It creates more complexity, especially in areas dominated by elite lawyers, where judges can hide personal preference behind layers of doctrine and procedure. The more insulated the profession becomes, the more the law starts serving the people inside it instead of the people subject to it.
The psychology behind this is not complicated. People tend to favor their own group. That is human nature. We are more likely to empathize with people we see as like us and less likely to fully understand people outside that group. When most judges come from the same professional class, trained in the same system, rewarded by the same institutions, and surrounded by the same assumptions, that bias does not disappear when they put on a robe. It follows them to the bench.
Applied to the judiciary, that means the legal profession does not just share a credential. It shares a mindset. And that mindset can quietly devalue the perspectives of people outside of it. That framework comes to the bench with them, and over time it can get worse, not better. If you are someone like me who studies psychology, cognition, and cognitive bias, you start to see just how much of human judgment is affected by things most people are not even aware of. Most biases are unconscious unless a person is highly self-aware. Many of them come from old survival instincts, from a time when the human brain was built to see threat everywhere. But civilization, technology, and the modern world have advanced much faster than the brain has. The result is that people carry hidden biases into decisions without even realizing it. Judges are no exception. Studies have shown that timing, fatigue, hunger, and even small physical conditions can affect judgment. A decision made on a Friday can differ from one made on a Monday. A person who is tired, hungry, or mentally overloaded does not process the world the same way. Without an outside check, all we are doing is magnifying those biases instead of correcting them.
We are also one of the few countries that does not use some kind of commission to nominate judges and review the process. When I started looking at what other countries do to avoid these systemic biases, one thing stood out. Many of them include at least one person in the process who has no ties to the legal profession. That matters. Denmark, which has had one of the most trusted court systems in the world for years, includes people in the process who are not part of the legal field. That allows them to catch things others miss. It creates a check from outside the institution. That is part of why I was able to write such a long paper on this in the first place. I saw things from the outside that people inside the system had become blind to, because once a profession becomes too insulated, it starts wanting to protect itself more than correct itself.
If we had better judges on the bench, caseloads would likely go down because fewer people would need to appeal bad decisions. But more than anything, we need judges with real moral regard for the job. If you take away the title, the robe, and the prestige, would this still be a person you trust to make decisions that shape other people’s lives? That is the bottom line.
I kept this amendment focused mostly on the upper courts, especially the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the circuit courts, because those are the courts that create binding precedent. If we are going to continue with a common law system, then those are the judges who need the strongest safeguards.
I left district court nominations with the President because there is still something symbolic about that role. But they should have to prove themselves once they are there. They should not get a free pass just because they were appointed. That part is covered more directly in the next amendment.
The lack of transparency surrounding the courts is absurd. I cannot even explain how triggering this issue is for me, considering I have spent the last year trying to obtain the names of judges in the North Carolina Court of Appeals who ruled outside their authority. That was not even part of a complaint process. I was simply asking for the names of judges who issued a public ruling. I cannot even file a complaint against them because I do not know who they are.
That is a story for another time. But the point is this. I went through every channel available to get those names, and instead of the courts protecting the Constitution, they protected their own. When the commissions reviewing judges are made up of people from the same professional circle, the same industry, and often the same relationships, why would anyone believe that a real complaint process would be any different? If they are willing to go to such lengths to conceal the identity of judges who acted publicly, why would they be any more transparent when someone files an actual misconduct complaint?
Let us be honest. At this point, the whole process seems almost pointless. There were more than 1,800 judicial complaints in the federal court system last year, and that does not even include state judges. Almost all went nowhere. They were dismissed, quietly closed, or ended with little more than a slap on the wrist.
I used to think secrecy around judicial complaints was meant to protect judges from unfair attacks by angry litigants. After dealing with multiple judges myself, I no longer believe that. Now it looks far more like protection of the institution than protection of fairness. And the logic behind it falls apart pretty quickly. Of course people are going to complain. People complain about restaurants, doctors, schools, employers, and every other service or authority they deal with. The issue is not whether complaints exist. The issue is consistency and patterns. If every judge in a district has one or two complaints, that may simply reflect unhappy litigants. But if one judge has twenty, that is an outlier, and outliers are where questions should begin.
That kind of transparency would also help people prepare. If you know a judge has a pattern of delay, hostility, bias, or incompetence, then at least you can walk into court aware of the risk and protect yourself and the record accordingly. Instead, people are forced into proceedings blind while the system pretends that secrecy somehow serves justice.
Hiding complaints against judges is not logical. If you choose to hold public office and exercise public power, then scrutiny comes with the job. In fact, it makes more sense to allow a complaint process to be open and visible than to create an environment where people feel they cannot even be heard. When people are ignored long enough, resentment builds. That should not be surprising. What is surprising is that the judiciary treats that resentment as the problem instead of asking what caused it.
What I find especially concerning is that judicial complaints reportedly rose by 23 percent last year. That is not normal. Yet instead of treating that as a warning sign that something may be wrong inside the courts, the response seems to be to blame the public for losing trust. But those things are not separate. People often lose trust because there is something to lose trust in. Saying the country is more heated than usual is not an excuse. If anything, when public tension is that high, the judiciary should be under even greater scrutiny, not less.
If this secrecy is supposed to protect reputations, that argument fails too. Everyone else in public life is expected to answer for complaints and accusations in public. If a complaint is false, then let the record show that it was investigated and dismissed. That is how vindication works. Why should judges be the only people in public power whose complaint system is hidden from the public they govern?
The absurdity goes even further. The judiciary releases total complaint numbers, but not the names of the judges involved, not the districts, and often not even meaningful patterns. So if there were 1,800 complaints and roughly 3,000 judges, that does not tell the public much of anything. It does not show whether the problem is widespread or concentrated. It does not show whether the same judges are drawing repeated complaints. It does not show whether certain districts are producing the same problems over and over again. That is not accountability. That is statistical fog.
The courts complain constantly about being overloaded. But I would be willing to bet that much of that overload is concentrated in the same places where bad judging is happening, the same districts where litigants keep appealing, the same judges whose conduct keeps creating avoidable problems. That would be the logical place to start looking. But the public cannot do that analysis because the information is concealed.
If a judge is allowed to carry the title “Honorable,” then that title should mean something. It should come with accountability, not insulation. Honor is not just a word you put before someone’s name. It is something that must be lived up to. If a judge cannot withstand public scrutiny, then perhaps that judge should not be judging other people in the first place.
And let us be clear. Transparency will not stop good people from becoming judges. It will only discourage the ones who want the robe without the responsibility. Keeping judges concealed while everyone else is exposed in public record sends the message that they are above the law. They are not. It does not matter whether someone is a judge, a lawyer, or anything else. No title places a person above accountability.