Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the actual language of the amendments?
- Are you serious about this or is this just a petition?
- Don't we already have the right to vote?
- How does corporate rule threaten local democracy?
- How is democracy "illegal"?
- Is this a Tea Party/Communist plot?"
- Why doesn't my name show up on the website after I sign the petition?
What is the actual language of the amendments?
A number of different versions of democracy amendments dealing with corporate personhood, votings rights, and local democracy are currently under discussion. We deliberately have not chosen specific language at this time because we believe that the drafting process must involve many diverse individuals and organizations. Yes, lawyers and law professors are among our steering committee and our wider circle of counselors; however, their opinions are not the only ones that we will taken into account in offering model language for the democracy amendments.
Are you serious about this or is this just a petition? What will you do with the names?
The Motion to Amend is the beginning of a multi-year movement to amend the Constitution. We are not petitioning anyone else to do that for us. Every individual and organization that signs on to the Motion to Amend is a part of this movement. We will continue to reach out to you and to provide support in efforts to win adoption by the states of democracy amendments to the national and state constitutions.
Don't we already have the right to vote?
Actually, no.
There is no federal right to vote. The 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th, amendments to the U.S. Constitution prevent states from denying or abridging the right to vote based on race, sex, failure to pay taxes, or age (after the age of 18). However, the wording in these amendments is negative: the states shall not “deny” or “abridge” the right to vote. It does not require the states to establish any right to vote in the first place.
The U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has affirmed that governments within the U.S. can (and do) disenfranchise individuals and groups of citizens, and so long as they do it without provable bias, it is presumed to be legal.
In the 2000 case of Alexander v Mineta (in which Washington D.C. residents challenged their lack of congressional representation), the Court declared the Constitution "does not protect the right of all citizens to vote, but rather the right of all qualified citizens to vote.” And it’s state legislatures wield the power to decide who is “qualified.”
Just months after Alexander, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority in Bush v Gore denied Florida citizens a right to ensure their votes were counted, saying, "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote [for presidential electors]." Tens of thousands of Floridians who were purged wrongly from the voting rolls were denied recourse.
The Bush v. Gore ruling also meant Florida's legislators could have followed through on their threats to simply disregarded citizens' votes and choose electors themselves. This is why a right to vote also must ensure our votes are accurately and transparently counted and determine the outcomes of elections.
Voting in the United States presently is not a right, but a privilege -- one granted or withheld at the discretion of local and state governments. The U.S. is one of just 11 among 120 or so constitutional democracies that fail to guarantee a right to vote in their constitutions (as of 2005). Right or wrong, the Supreme Court has made its interpretation of the Constitution clear. If U.S. citizens are to enjoy a true right to vote and have those votes count, we must drive that right into the Constitution.
And if we take the concept of democracy seriously, we know that much more than voting is involved. Citizens should have the right not only to vote for representatives to make decisions for them, but to be integrally involved in the decision-making process when such decisions directly affect their daily lives.
Resources for further information:
- House Joint Resolution 28, a resolution to add a federal right to vote to the U.S. Constitution, was introduced by U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Illinois) in March 3, 2009. It has gained at least 58 co-sponsors previously. see: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.J.RES.28:
- “Beyond the Voting Rights Act: Why We Need a Constitutional Right to Vote” details some of these cases and other examples of disenfranchisement. See: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/right_to_vote.html (Also available in Spanish: Por qué necesitamos el derecho al voto en la constitución. Vea: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/el_derecho_a_votar.html)
- Visit FairVote for several more detailed academic and strategy papers on the topic. See: http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=209
- See the U.S. Department of Justice website for additional background on the Voting Rights Act and federal law. See: http://www.justice.gov/crt/voting/intro/intro.php
How does corporate rule threaten local democracy?
The word “democracy” comes from the Greek words demos, which means “people,” and kratia, which means “power” or “rule.” So very literally, “democracy” means “rule by the people.”
What does it mean to be those who rule? It is to make the decisions about how things are. Local democracy, then, is about making decisions about all those things that touch our lives locally: the everyday things that determine our quality of life.
Today, the ferment of local democracy is potent. It is fed by unprecedented dissatisfaction with the performance of the federal government and supported by the decentralizing power of the internet. In this new ferment, deliberation, education and activism have combined in the new connections made between local communities and global movements and ideas. Never before have localities and states had the capacity to drive social progress that they do now:
- As the federal minimum wage standard has fallen behind the cost of living, over 130 localities have adopted higher living wage and minimum wage ordinances of their own.
- In place of Harry Truman’s unmet promise of universal health care for the entire nation, localities have begun to enact public universal health coverage and sick leave laws.
- As federal regulatory agencies have been captured by the telecom, energy, and food corporations they were supposed to regulate, local people have established community wireless, community cable, public power, and municipal food utilities.
Yet as local and state governments innovate and advocate, the federal government has placed barriers in their way. Increasingly, Congress has legislated, the President mandated, and the Supreme Court adjudicated away the 10th Amendment reservation of power to the states, and by extension, in home rule states, to local governments. Scorning the constitutional guarantee of a federal government of limited and enumerated powers, and belittling state constitutional provisions guaranteeing limited “home rule” authority to municipalities and counties, corporate lobbyists have developed a doctrine of “federal preemption” as a tool for obliterating local and state laws deemed threatening to business corporations.
For example, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have repeatedly acted to preempt local telecommunications initiatives. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 severely limited the ability of local governments to regulate local cable markets, and recently introduced legislation would preempt municipal broadband networks. The FCC has issued rulings preempting even minor telecom regulations regarding satellite dish placement.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with corporate interests in ruling that acts of Congress or federal regulations preempted state and local laws regarding divestment from Burma (Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council), drug policy reform (Gonzales v. Raich), workplace health and safety (Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Association), pre-Holocaust insurance claims (American Insurance Association v Garamendi), and probate rules (Egelhoff v. Egelhoff), among other things.
Even federally-negotiated global trade agreements pose preemption threats to local and state policies. The World Trade Organization and so-called Free Trade Agreements like NAFTA operate in anti-democratic ways which can work to eliminate laws and regulations at the local, state, or federal levels that are considered impediments to trade. Under U.S. bilateral and regional free trade agreements, private foreign investors can also sue signatory governments for compensation for damages allegedly caused by state and local laws that significantly diminish the value of an investment.
Much of this section (above) is excerpted from Unleash Democracy: Policies for a New Federalism, by Ben Manski and Karen Dolan, published in Mandate for Change: Policies and Leadership for 2009 and Beyond. See http://www.mandate4change.org/
How is democracy "illegal"?
The decision in Citizens United is a perfect example of just how democracy has become “illegal.” Here, a duly elected body of representatives followed a long tradition of law that sought to preserve the integrity of elections by limiting the influence of corporations in elections. Whether you believe McCain-Feingold to be the right solution to campaign finance, it followed a basic democratic process. However, five members of an unelected body (the Supreme Court) had the ability to nullify all the work done by our elected representatives and overturn this law.
We know that there are important moments in our country's history in which the Supreme Court has used their ability to determine the constitutionality of certain laws (what is known as 'judicial review') for good: Brown v. Board is one such clear example. But we believe that this power has been used much more often to the detriment of everyday citizens. With great regularity, the Supreme Court has used judicial review to take away citizen's rights to make democratic decisions about their communities. They have,to a large extent, labeled such efforts “unconstitutional” - that is, illegal.
What's more, the power of judicial review was never established by the constitution itself. Rather, it's a power that the court claimed for themselves in a number of cases, including Marbury v. Madison. Think about that: a group of unelected officials gave themselves the right to overturn citizen-made law, and to have the final word on what all law and the constitution means. It's through use of this power that the Supreme Court has 'discovered' corporations and corporate rights in the constitution. Such judge-made law is not democracy.
To read more about Marbury and the issue of judicial review, see "The Case Against Judicial Review" by David Cobb (http://www.poclad.org/JudicialReview.php). See also excerpts from Jane Anne Morris's book, "Gaveling Down the Rabble" (http://www.poclad.org/articles/Gaveling_excerpt.pdf) and Prof. Jamie Raskin's, "Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People" (http://www.routledge.com/books/Overruling-Democracy-isbn9780415934398).
Is this a Tea Party plot?
The Move to Amend is a heartfelt response by Americans of all political persuasions concerned about the future of democracy in the United States.
Is this a Communist plot?
See above.
Why doesn't my name show up on the website after I sign the petition?
We elected not to publish the names of signers on the website in order to protect your privacy, and also so we don't have to take the time to weed out invalid entries manually. You can see the number of petition signers on the front page. The number updates every hour.
