GGL-006, Citizen Initiative

Not law, and the only draft here that creates a power rather than describing one. Built and switched off; adopting it turns it on.

GGL-006: Citizen Initiative. A petition that has reached the threshold in Amendment IV may be put to a vote of the people by the citizen who authored it, after the President has answered it or after thirty (30) days from qualification, whichever is sooner. Such a vote is subject to the same notice, thresholds and counting as any other. It may propose a law, an Amendment, or a question for decision; it cannot impose a penalty, take away a citizenship, or fill an office.

Notes

The problem. Amendment II promises that "a united three-quarters of the citizenry can always overrule them both". As things stand that promise is thinner than it sounds, because only the President can put a question to the people - so the citizens can overrule the President only on questions the President chose to ask. A veto over the agenda is not called a veto, but it does much of the same work.

Amendment IV comes close and stops short. A petition signed by a tenth of citizens must be received, considered and answered with public reasons. An answer is not a decision, and nothing turns the petition into a ballot.

Why the registry does not simply do it anyway. An earlier version did, and it was wrong: reading an unstated power into constitutional silence is how a system quietly stops being the thing it was written to be. It would be strange to guard against the President doing that while doing it in the code.

"or after thirty days" - without it, a President who never answers a petition blocks the vote forever, which reintroduces the problem. Amendment IV already forbids indefinite delay; this gives that prohibition an effect.

The carve-out is deliberate. A sanction or revocation is the state proceeding against a named person, and POC-006 entitles them to a fair hearing. Those should not begin because somebody collected signatures. Filling an office is excluded because Amendment III already says how, and a law should not offer a second route to something the Constitution has already routed.