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Comment by sbov | Hacker News Reader

In the US, I've always found it humorous that there is no legal penalty for lawmakers continually and knowingly violating the constitution. The worst that happens is they get their bill struck down in court, then their state's legislature can vote in the next law.

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How about 3 strikes for politicians. They do their job poorly, they lose it, regardless of their election status.

There is no agreed upon measurement of job performance that transcends the partisan divide.

Well, as a german, where this happens often enough: If a law gets truck down by the Federal Constitutional Court ("Bundesverfassungsgericht") as being in violation of the constitution, this universally can be seen as a bad job performance for the lawmakers. They know the law was in violation of the constitution, still they agreed upon it. It's their fucking job to make sure laws are not in violation of the constitution. This clearly justifies a strike.

> It's their fucking job to make sure laws are not in violation of the constitution.

Well, not really: That's the constitutional court's job.

Is that really true? I'd expect there to be cost associated with shitty law. Uncertainty and frequent changes shouldn't be in the interest of anyone but those whishing for extremes. Thus i'd hope for companies to support politicians who's legislature achievements will last. I'd hope, but am of cause not sure this can overcome those seeking short term benefits and political tribal blood sport thanks to the shitty US two party voting system.

Research shows people support of basic different options like more generous or stricter welfare programs change based just on which party they were told supported which option (chosen randomly by the researchers). In the face of that it's hard to believe that people particularly care about deeper things like that.

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