New Bill of Rights

Rejected

These aren't judgments that the issues don't matter — they're judgments that a proposal can't pass the full-spectrum test, and that including it would code the whole project as partisan. Each category below has its own page: the proposal as commonly framed, the best available evidence with party breakdowns, the specific test it failed, the framings we tested, and the path back. A rejection can be revisited if survey or salon work reveals an unexpected consensus framing.

Rejected categories

  • Abortion

    High topline, low floor; no symmetric rule

    Weak floor in both directions: 25% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats support a federal amendment protecting a right to abortion (UMass Amherst/YouGov, 2024), and a national ban draws 7% of Democrats.

  • Balanced Budget

    Depth: collapses under trade-offs

    Requiring a balanced federal budget draws 84% of Republicans and 68% of Democrats in the abstract (Economist/YouGov, 2026), but support fell to 31% in the one poll that named entitlement cuts.

  • Civic Information and Informed Citizenry

    Existential test; statutory, not constitutional

    Never polled as an amendment; it fails the existential-problem and why-an-amendment tests, and both parties distrust the AI mechanism (54% of Republicans and 49% of Democrats expect AI to harm the news, Pew, 2024).

  • Election Technology and Modernization

    Not popular; statutory

    Allowing people to vote entirely online drew 28% support overall (AP-NORC, 2020) and no majority in either party since 2022; the technology items that are popular are statutory standards Congress already sets.

  • Electoral College and Presidential Elections

    Low floor that moves with outcomes

    A national popular vote drew 46% of Republicans and 80% of Democrats (Pew, 2024), and 26-43% of Republicans under amendment wording; each party's support has moved with who last won the presidency.

  • Eliminate Qualified Immunity for Policing

    High topline, low floor; stale; statutory

    Eliminating qualified immunity so police can be sued drew 42% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats (Cato/YouGov, 2020); no fresh independent poll exists, and Congress could end the doctrine by statute.

  • Expanding the House of Representatives

    Weak floor; depth tested and failed; why-an-amendment (the size of the House has been a statute since 1929)

    Increasing the size of the House drew 23% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats (Pew, 2023), and 11% of Republicans when the costs were named; its size has been a statute since 1929.

  • Filibuster reform

    Regime-coded; both directions fail symmetry

    Ending the filibuster drew 8% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats (Monmouth, 2022), and keeping it as is drew 19% of Democrats; every reading and every roll call has tracked Senate control.

  • Senate and Congressional Structure

    Low floor; symmetry; Article V equal-suffrage bar

    More senators for larger states drew 19% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats (Pew, 2023); Article V's equal-suffrage clause bars proportionality without every losing state's consent.

  • Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico

    Weak floor and symmetry (DC); why-an-amendment (Puerto Rico, since admission is a statute under Article IV Section 3)

    Two jurisdictions, two results: DC statehood drew 13% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats (Yahoo News/YouGov, 2021); Puerto Rico drew 41% and 79% (YouGov, 2024) and can be admitted by statute.

  • Supreme Court Expansion

    High topline, low floor; statutory; fails symmetry for expansion

    Adding justices draws 39% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats (Marquette, 2026); it also needs no amendment and cannot be written to bind both parties.

  • Voting Rights

    High topline, low floor; fails symmetry

    Weak floor on both sides: 32% of Republicans back no-excuse mail voting (Pew, 2025) and 37% of Democrats back proof of citizenship to register (Marist, 2026).

Rejected provisions inside proposed amendments

Clauses drafted for an amendment already on the list and kept out of its text, for the same reasons a whole category is kept off it.

Ethics

  • Extending the trading ban to all federal employees

    Depth (trade-off collapse); blast radius; no why-an-amendment answer of its own

    Extending the ban on trading individual securities beyond elected and appointed constitutional officers to the entire federal civil service.

  • Forced sale of existing holdings

    Abuse-vs-remedy gap and depth, failing together in one instrument; blast radius; staleness

    Requiring covered officers to sell existing holdings outright, in place of the article's blind-trust and diversified-fund safe harbor.

Limited Presidential Pardon Reform

  • Congressional disapproval of pardons

    High topline, low floor; abuse-vs-remedy gap; the mercy-destruction trap

    A clause voiding a pardon if two-thirds of each House of Congress votes to disapprove it within ninety days of its publication — the Mondale check.

Privacy

  • A constitutional right to deletion

    High topline, low floor; blast radius (First Amendment collision); framing dependency

    A constitutional right to deletion of personal information, in place of the article's guarantee of access and correction plus an express legislative power over commercial deletion.

Also see the candidates — the open pipeline of proposals under consideration — the wording that would resolve them on the polling questions page, and the polling evidence. How proposals are accepted, held, or rejected is described on the mission page.