{"id":929,"date":"2014-08-07T15:17:48","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T19:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/?p=929"},"modified":"2014-08-09T22:30:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T02:30:57","slug":"rhode-island-center-for-freedom-prosperitys-concon-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/?p=929","title":{"rendered":"The Report by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity"},"content":{"rendered":"

At today\u2019s hearing of the Bi-partisan Preparatory Commission, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity released a report, The Path to a Constitutional Convention<\/a>, which provides a well packaged addition to the discussion of why and how to convene a constitutional convention.\u00a0 The core of the report is the \u201chow\u201d question: the process by which delegates to a constitutional convention would be selected.\u00a0 This is a very important issue, as the answers to it largely shape the integrity of the constitutional convention itself.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s helpful to get this discussion going early, as the General Assembly has a lot of discretion (too much, in my opinion), in determining the electoral procedures. \u00a0Describing the types of issues a constitutional convention could address is also helpful.<\/p>\n

The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity\u2019s report largely follows Rhode Island\u2019s last enabling act in 1985<\/a> to convene a state constitutional convention (it also is largely consistent with RhodeIslandConCon.info\u2019s FAQ<\/a> on how a constitutional convention could work).\u00a0 The 1985 enabling act is the most recent in U.S. history, as Rhode Island was the last state to convene a constitutional convention.\u00a0\u00a0 It may now be outdated, but of America’s 233 state constitutional conventions, it was also one of the best, so the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity had a good foundation on which to build.<\/p>\n

At a minimum, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity\u2019s report will hopefully prevent the General Assembly\u2019s backtracking on the 1985 precedent.\u00a0 But its report goes further.\u00a0 It also suggests that delegates to the state constitutional convention should not simultaneously hold office in the General Assembly or other statewide elective office.\u00a0 This would bring Rhode Island up to par with other states, such as Michigan, that recognize that simultaneously serving in the legislature and in a constitutional convention is as much an affront to America\u2019s checks & balances system as a governor simultaneously serving as a legislator or judge (elected officials holding simultaneous office at a local and state level gets a bit messier from a democratic theory perspective, but that type of dual office holding is also often banned; ditto for the problem of holding office while recently being a paid lobbyist.)<\/p>\n

The biggest procedural omission in the report was no recommendation for using\u00a0ranked choice voting (more popularly known as instant runoff voting) to determine the delegates. \u00a0Ranked choice voting can eliminate a lot of common electoral shenanigans both by voters (who otherwise have an incentive to vote strategically for candidates who they think can win rather than whom they prefer) and political operatives (who can support\u00a0candidates who have no chance of winning to hurt a front-runner they oppose). \u00a0This is especially a problem with state constitutional convention\u00a0elections, where many candidates often run for a single delegate position. \u00a0In Rhode Island in 1984, there were an average of five candidates for each delegate position.<\/p>\n

Winner-take-all voting procedures don’t work well when there are many candidates for a single office.\u00a0 With so many candidates, ranked choice voting is a more democratic procedure and one that new technology has made more practical than ever before.\u00a0 Thanks to its use in more than a dozen cities (as well as countless private organizations), it\u2019s also now relatively easy to implement.<\/p>\n

\u2013by J.H. Snider, Administrator, RhodeIslandConCon.info<\/em><\/p>\n

A blog post of the second meeting, including links to\u00a0written testimony can be found<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum:\u00a0\u00a0Many of the procedural proposals contained in the report by the\u00a0Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity were echoed by other speakers at today’s public hearing. \u00a0Two speakers also endorsed instant runoff voting, which was not in the report. \u00a0A total of nine individuals testified, of which six had something to say about procedural issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At today\u2019s hearing of the Bi-partisan Preparatory Commission, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity released a report, The Path to a Constitutional Convention, which provides a well packaged addition to the discussion of why and how to convene a constitutional convention.\u00a0 The core of the report is the \u201chow\u201d question: the process by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":953,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhodeisland.concon.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}