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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

Hah, I was going to say that sounded needlessly heavy handed.

Then I checked what the Netherlands does and found that changing the constitution doesn’t merely require you to get a majority, it also requires you to survive at least one election and keep that (super)majority before you can even begin.

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Even that sounds easy compared to my country. In Australia a constitutional change requires a referendum, with a double majority condition to pass. Specifically it requires the vote in over half the states to be in favour, in addition to the overall national vote in favour.

That described Dutch system also sounds relatively easy compared to the US model, which requires 2/3 votes in each chamber of Congress (meaning the people-based one and the land-based one), *then* 3/4 of the states (so another land-based check) have to ratify it.

Functionally this means that in the modern political climate, the US Constitution is fully frozen with no hope of amendment really ever again.

Yeah, I wasn’t clear enough. The first vote (before the election) requires a simple majority vote. The second vote (after the election) requires a 2/3 in favor vote in both houses.

I’m not sure if that’s worse than 3/4 states since the Netherlands isn’t so politically localized.

> this means that in the modern political climate, the US Constitution is fully frozen

Would note that this is a very modern phenomenon, with Nixon having considered pushing for abolishing the electoral college in the 70s.

Also note that The Netherlands frequently does constitution changes, even with that complexity. Our current version for example dates from 2022, when (among other changes) the secrecy of correspondence was amended to include all telecommunication, as it only included communication of letter, phone, and telegraph before that.

https://www.denederlandsegrondwet.nl/id/vlxuov0ja0xh/grondwe...

Please reboot your government for the changes to take effect.

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