THE NO CONFIDENCE VOTE

The Constitution provides for the removal of a president due to being 'unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office' through protocols of Amendment XXV. Should the president and the Cabinet disagree over whether the president is fit to hold office, Congress settles the matter by a 2/3 majority. Note that Amendment XXV does not really specify the type of inability.

Impeachment occurs when a president or other official is found guilty of 'high crimes and misdemeanors'. A House majority is needed to invoke the impeachment process and the House provides the articles of impeachment. The Senate has 'the sole power to try all impeachments' federally and when the impeach-ee is the president the Chief Justice presides over the proceedings. In all impeachments a 2/3 majority is needed to convict.

Now as far as incompetence itself, there is debate over whether impeachment should pertain to such situations. We believe that the issue should now be settled and wish to amend the Constitution in order to solidify interpretation of 'misdemeanors' in terms of legality as understood in the modern parlance while adding other clarifiers to allow impeachment for say character issues or fiduciary shortcomings should that be desired. Such an amendment should also provide for a separate process to handle the dismissal of a president or vice president due to severe incompetence. Perhaps such an amendment may also dismiss a president due to the effects of his/her criminal actions or inability but at the state level when such items are not under impeachment or "25th'd" federally as they should get due to timidness or even cover-ups by the powers that be. If citizens can be subject to state and federal charges, well........

With regard to the times that our suggested protocol will address presidential incompetence, we need to properly define incompetence and set what level of incompetence we will require before triggering any no confidence vote. First we delineate what incompetence is not. A policy decision happening to not favor the interests of some lobby, industry, government agency or other faction is not the litmus test for incompetence. Mere partisan interests are to be excluded as well. Neither do bad outcomes from a policy decision or action rise to the occasion of leveling procedural incompetence towards a sitting president. Sometimes bad things can happen despite someone taking reasonable and prudent actions. There can be unforeseen and unexpected consequences in certain situations that surprise most or everyone. As well, we wish to establish a degree of acceptable incompetence since everybody screws up from time to time.

Let's consider some examples of these exceptions. One would be where someone has to make a quick decision with limited time and suffers from a lack of all the facts especially where there is unavoidable risk no matter what is done. Here we cannot make accusations of incompetence just because things go sour. Another example would be where someone screws up but the context or consequences are not unusually severe. Say an administration misses a deadline to enact a new program by submitting a file package to the wrong department which causes a loss of money or delay, especially where the submission procedure is new or inherently confusing to anyone. This should not be a cause to remove for incompetency. Even in a situation where there is a higher loss of property or even life cannot be in itself a cause for one's removal as such things can occur in the fog of war or other dangerous/stressful situations. For instance, say that a commercial airliner is heading towards D.C. in restricted airspace in an erratic manner on a threatening flight path. Attempts made to communicate with it go unheeded and it is getting too close for comfort. Other options are properly exhausted. The suspicion is that it has been hacked or hijacked by terrorists making a strike on the capitol. The order is given to shoot it down with little time left. It is then discovered that it merely lost its navigation and communications temporarily due to some technical glitch that they may have been in the process of correcting, nonetheless many lives are lost. It is a tragic occurrence, however a charge of incompetence is not warranted concerning the order to fire.

So what would be considered as grossly incompetent? Actions or actions not taken that would invite greater risk, loss, damage or danger where such actions and outcomes would have been obvious to anyone of a reasonable mind holding that position of authority. This is especially true where there has been adequate time to get the facts, there have been warnings of a bad outcome and where even someone who is not of a high level in the understanding or role of the profession would notice and conclude by common sense that the actions taken or not taken would be detrimental. Really damning are the series of steps or actions during which one could have easily noticed opportunity to change course in order to alter the negative outcome. It could be where one or a few actions/decisions were of such obvious and serious magnitude that any reasonable person would approach with more adequate time and forethought to the consequences, gathering as much information about possible outcomes in order to act accordingly or plan contingencies and yet did not bother to do so with near catastrophic results.

The assessment metrics of any such national damage would reckon in the arenas of very high financial loss, vast amount of property loss or breakage, consequential environmental degradation, significant gain or advantage given to adversaries or enemies, high exposure of national intelligence or strategies, serious damage to diplomatic ties and alliances, the inordinate or unreasonable loss of life and limb or physical suffering. Specific examples would entail: allowing an enemy to overrun U.S. territory without warning nationals within, carrying out sloppy logistics that exposes troops and protectorates to great peril, allowing easy capture of U.S. installations and equipment by an enemy, abandonment of U.S. citizens, troops or allies plus giving homeland residence to the enemy.

Now that we have established some benchmarks of what qualifies as incompetence and the degree to which a president and vice president should be held accountable, we outline the procedure to be used to carry out such a no confidence vote. First it should require an agreed upon list of offense(s) committed by the president and/or vice president. Merely stating the president or vice president as incompetent is not enough. The list of offense(s) should be accompanied by the public record, documents and any other evidence showing that the party in question has indeed performed or failed to perform certain acts that have caused the cited damages of sufficient magnitude. Also listed would be the constitutional or legal statutes indicating that the party had or had not the responsibility or authority to carry out (or not carry out) the actions resulting in the damages. This statement of culpabilities will spell out all to be considered as well as providing a necessary check against frivolous partisan or political no confidence votes on behalf of opportunistic factions or ginned-up media mobs.

Now who or what body should carry the task of coming up with the list of offense and statement of culpabilities? We know the Congress has a role in impeachment and in the inability amendment (Amendment XXV), the latter of which the Cabinet has a role in as well. Note that in the last few decades we have seen attempts to carry out those safeguards for partisan or insufficient cause. Also there have been times of corruption and unlawful situations exposed that were worthy of impeachment but no action was taken. So instead of further relying on an administration's loyalists in a Cabinet or the latest bi-poller incarnation of Congress or any other institution embedded within the Den of Corruption (D.C.) -- let us instead turn to the state level which is more spread out across the nation. We will be reliant on the representation of smaller constituencies thus providing a greater number of participants yielding a better sample of national content or discontent (albeit still bi-poller but less RNC/DNC perhaps). We are talking about the state legislators of the several states.

We hereby give the means of their no confidence vote.

The 2/3 general provision and the 3/5 with chamber contingencies provide bellwether metrics indicating significant concern or deterioration experienced around the country on account of the specified charge(s) of incompetence or possibly the effects of criminality or inability should that be an option. One would think that having 2/3 of the legislatures getting 2/3 in both houses would be a sufficient enough feat to make a charge stick, however nearly 1/3 of the states on one side of the spectrum (blue) and over 1/3 of the states on the other side of the spectrum (red) are near or over 2/3 majorities in their chambers by party seats already. This makes the 2/3 of 2/3 less of a watermark so the 3/5 overall majority was included there to ensure reaching a strong indicator.

We invite state legislators to begin using this protocol when necessary before it is ratified as an amendment in order to provide the public with a measure of poor presidential performance. This will give incentive to incorporate such a no confidence vote into our Constitution when the people are suffering without remedy especially as D.C. powers fail to remove and even insulate such officeholders.