When Congress passes major complex legislation, they often make minor errors in drafting or clarity. It is relatively routine for Congress to follow-up such legislation with what is known as a “technical corrections” bill, in which these minor errors or unclear provisions are corrected. Although such correction legislation on major enactments has become more controversial in the age of intense partisan hardball, correction bills still pass through Congress with little opposition.

We need a technical corrections amendment to the Constitution. The Constitution has numerous errors of omission, unclear passages, and noncontroversial anachronistic provisions. While there have been 27 amendments to the Constitution, only a few of them have made technical corrections. For instance, the 25th amendment clarifies that, in the case of the death or resignation of the president, the vice-president literally becomes the president (as opposed to “acting president” or simply having the powers of the office “devolve” upon him or her). The 20th amendment separates the presidential term of office from the congressional term of office by 17 days, which corrects a problem of the House voting for the president in the case of no electoral-college winner; prior to the amendment, the outgoing House voted. Now the incoming House votes, which makes much more logical sense.

What should count as a technical correction? I propose a two-prong test: first, the change should be something that we wouldn’t think twice about if it was already in the Constitution. Take the 20th amendment: if the original Constitution separated the terms of the president and the members of Congress, no one would object or even ever consider it. Second, the change can have a potential big impact on things, but not an immediate, known impact. This will allow us to clarify some contingencies that are quite important but unlikely to come up in the near-term (such as the order of succession). Absent a lack of short-term impact, such provisions should be less controversial, as political actors will have no reason to support/oppose them for short-term gain, and can operate in a veil-of-ignorance as to how they might advantage or disadvantage ideological or partisan groups in the future.

Obviously, these conditions will create edge cases that can be argued one way or another. The important thing to remember is that we aren’t talking about an abortion-ban amendment or a “right to vote” amendment or a gun control amendment or a balanced budget amendment. Those are all quite clearly not technical corrections.

So here we go. The draft amendment has six sections. Annotated comments appear within.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States for technical corrections.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein) That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

SECTION 1. The minimum age for service as a Representative, Senator, or President of the United States shall be 18 years of age.

Currently, the Constitution provides a minimum age of 25, 30, and 35 for the House, Senate, and presidency, respectively. These are largely anachronisms. Voters are more than capable of deciding whether an adult is suitable to serve in Congress or as president. Some may argue for an absolute abolition of the age requirement, but I personally am comfortable limiting the offices to adults.

SECTION 2. Each state shall cast, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of votes for president and vice-president equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. Such votes will be directly transmitted to the President of the Senate.

This provision would eliminate the electors of the electoral college system without eliminating the basic voting structure of the electoral college. Each state would get the same number of votes as it currently receives, but those votes would be directly cast with no elector middleman. This would eliminate the nightmare possibility of faithless electors switching their vote and swinging the election, and it would also, by implication, remove the impediment for presidential and vice-presidential candidates to be from the same state.

SECTION 3. If no candidate for president receives an absolute majority of votes, the House shall choose the president from among the top two vote recipients.

Under the current system, if there is no electoral college winner (due to a tie or more than two candidates receiving electoral college votes), the House must choose from the top three vote-recipients. This creates the possibility of all sorts of nonsense. No third candidate with a tiny number of electoral votes should be allowed to win the presidency. And a three-person ballot in a two-way tie for the electoral college creates some true nightmare scenarios. A top-two runoff in the House conforms much better to our basic normative notions of democracy.

SECTION 4. All citizens of the United States, naturalized or from birth, are eligible to the Office of President provided they meet the other qualifications of the Constitution.

This eliminates the natural-born citizen clause of presidential eligibility, which is largely an anachronism. No foreign-born prince is going to be elected president. The voters can handle that problem. That said, a softer version of this section would simply clarify that anyone who was a citizen of the United States at the time of their birth is a natural-born citizen. That would end all disputes about whether someone born overseas to two American parents, or to one American parent, is a natural-born citizen.

SECTION 5. Congress shall place no office in the presidential line of succession except executive branch offices that require Senate confirmation. 

Currently, the Constitution authorizes Congress to set a line of succession in law, without qualification. This is terrible on two fronts. First, it’s not clear if it is constitutional for legislative branch actors to be in that line of succession. And if, god forbid, we ever had to implement the line of succession, it would be a complete disaster if we had competing actors claiming they were the rightful constitutional successor, or claiming the current acting president was not constitutionally eligible. Second, even if it is constitutional, it’s just a terrible idea to have legislative branch offices in the line of succession. It creates an incentive (or the appearance of an incentive) for the Speaker of the House to pursue impeachments out of self-interest, and it creates a scenario in which the continuity of government entails a large shift in the partisan control of the presidency. Requiring the succession order to run through executive branch posts solves both of those problems.

SECTION 6. The convention process for amending the Constitution is hereby abolished.

The convention method for altering the constitution has never been used, and it is a Pandora’s box of problems. It should go.