To the editor: University of California, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's proposal for a new U.S. constitution is a shallow campaign piece that would throw the baby out with the bathwater.
He compares our current Constitution to a non-existent ideal of perfect democracy, compared to which our current system is patently “absurd.”
He should pay less attention to current polls and more to history. The “terrifying reality” of the republic in the “abyss” of political apocalypse is much more likely to emerge if the Constitution is thrown out and a new start is made.
Tom Weiss, Woodland Hills
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To the editor: Note to residents of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, and Delaware: You are still allowed to control the internal affairs of your states, but you can no longer interfere in the politics and affairs of the United States. You are now completely controlled by California, Florida, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Your representatives can still run in Congress, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously. Your power has dissolved. You are still part of the United States, but only in name.
Don't forget how small your population is. You now have a negligible voice in matters of national interest.
Your equal representation in the US Senate has been abolished. You no longer matter in Congress or in US elections, where your electoral votes are as minuscule as you are.
Why bother voting? They're second-class states now. So stay in your seats. The founding fathers are gone. You'll get over it.
That, apparently, is Chemerinsky's revisionist vision of the new United States. Fortunately, the threshold necessary to rewrite the Constitution is extremely high.
William Goldman, Los Angeles
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To the editor: I am surprised that Chemerinsky ignored the short circuit of Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution.
The constitutional minimum of one representative for every 30,000 people was a threat to rural American nativists, so instead of Congress growing with our population, House membership was frozen at 435 voting representatives in 1929.
Since a state's electors are allocated based on its number of senators and representatives, the Electoral College would have remained strong if Congress had been allowed to grow, and the popular vote would be better reflected than it is today.
Rather than going through the hassle of amending the Constitution, as Chemerinsky suggests, a simple legislative change by Congress would suffice to cancel the Redistricting Act of 1929. The battle would be to get current members of Congress to dilute their own power.
Pini Herman, Beverly Grove
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To the editor: The Electoral College needs to go. It's ridiculous that we have to go through this every four years when the future of the country could depend on the whims of a single state.
Furthermore, it has been proven time and again that when a president does not have a popular mandate, his presidency is not successful.
The Founders probably had a very good reason for structuring elections the way they did, but that was almost 250 years ago. There is no justification for this unbalanced system today.
Zena Thorpe, Chatsworth
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To the editor: Mr. Chemerinsky, I think former President Trump agrees with you that the United States needs a new Constitution. Be careful what you wish for.
Larry Furman, Woodland Hills
