Overview

Constitutional change is not a hypothetical. When 55 members of the newly-established 13 states gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to begin the process of drafting the laws that would govern the United States of America, it was with the explicit understanding that this would be an iterative and participatory process.

This process has played out over the course of our country’s 200 year-history. Even this summer, with the overturning of the Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo — the case challenging the 1984 decision that gave federal agencies the authority to interpret ambiguous Congressional statutes — we are seeing shifting expectations and roles of our governmental branches. As Marci Harris and Zach Graves write, this decision — with far-reaching impact that democracy experts are still working to fully comprehend — has the potential to shift federal power dynamics and empower Congress to be much more specific in their legislation. This leaves a massive opportunity for Congress to dramatically change how and what it governs. As we navigate these shifts in powers and responsibilities of our branches of government, it is up to us to ask ourselves about the types of changes we want to see in our governing system, and to empower each other to act to make those answers a reality.

Democracy 2076 is leading a process to co-create a long-term, affirmative strategy for amending the U.S. Constitution to be a more effective, responsive and representative basis for our governing infrastructure for the next generation. In December 2023, we convened organizers, constitutional law experts, comparativists, artists, journalists and futurists to envision what a Constitution for 2076 needs. Ultimately, we aligned on three categories of amendments to the Constitution that would help create the conditions for a thriving future across a variety of scenarios: universal basic income/guaranteed rights, re-structuring elections, and structural changes to Congress. 

Over the course of the event, participants built a forum for connection and creation, sharing perspectives, ideas and analysis in preparation for June 2024, when we planned to reconvene to better evaluate pathways for tangible constitutional change based on these amendments.

Participant Expectations

At the beginning of the convening, we asked participants what they hoped to take away from the convening:

• 25% of participants expressed a desire to build relationships and connections with other participants.
• 23% of participants wanted to learn skills, ideas, and strategies from the diverse experiences of fellow participants.
• 43% of participants hoped that the convening would inform their strategic planning — both for their organization’s own specific goals and in anticipation of looming Constitutional Conventions.
• 23% of participants hoped for, well, hope: that our time together would be a visionary experience of inspiration and hope for our collective futures.
• And finally, almost 55% of participants voiced a strong desire to learn more about the topics highlighted by the convening (Constitutional Conventions, scenario planning, strategic foresight) and opportunities for contribution and collaboration moving forward.

Over the course of the convening, there were four workshops where participants worked in groups to strategize pathways for ratifying three categories of constitutional amendments – universal rights, Congressional reform, and electoral reform – over the next 50 years. Throughout these workshops, participants were encouraged to be visionary and brainstorm beyond their usual constraints.

Workshop One: Building a 50-Year Plan for Constitutional Amendments

First, participants explored eight different regional scenarios for the year 2076 and developed a strategic, 50-year plan to achieve constitutional amendments that would advance the outcome of each future scenario. These scenarios were based on policy choices that could be made to deal with the projections we explored during the December convening — demographic change (including aging of the U.S. population), climate change, and the future of work and inequality. They were encouraged to think creatively and critically and to draw lessons from historic eras of progress, including civil rights and the fight for healthcare. To ground this exercise in real-world, existing advocacy efforts, speakers from Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, American Promise, and Make it Work Nevada shared insights on how they’ve designed their strategies to reach the current moment. Our speakers underscored the agency and urgency of today’s decision makers to make change now and the importance of building a “broad tent” coalition that includes diverse political priorities, identities, and perspectives in their advocacy.

This workshop began with an introduction to three “faces of power” that impact campaigns and how each form of power can be leveraged in legislative advocacy efforts: direct decision-making power, agenda-setting power, and the influencing power. From there, participants expanded on a timeline of the last 50 years, identifying key lessons to carry forward in their future-facing campaigns. Then, in eight small groups, participants were assigned to a possible 2076 scenario that was based on population changes in different regions of the United States.

Workshop Two: A Contingency Plan for a Constitutional Convention

Coming into the convening, a majority of participants expressed unfamiliarity or limited awareness of emerging strategies on Constitutional Conventions, including the “Convention of States,” a movement in the United States that seeks to call a Convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution with the explicit purpose of proposing and passing amendments to the Constitution. This effort has gained disproportionate traction in far-right, pro-Trump circles as a pro-authoritarian, minoritarian, and backwards-looking effort that, if successful and unchecked, would seriously threaten our democracy.

This workshop was designed to equip participants with knowledge about the Constitutional Convention process, address legal questions, and collaboratively develop an advocacy strategy  and strategic response to various scenarios. Participants heard from an expert panel with leaders from Common Cause (whose remarks we read), Columbia University, and HousingLOUISIANA to learn about various efforts to spark state and federal Conventions, as well as to better understand the situational landscape and potential legal challenges. 

Our panelists shared that under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, Congress is required to hold a Constitutional Convention if two-thirds of state legislatures (34 states) call for one, giving the delegates of the Convention the power to propose amendments. Because it’s never been done before, there are no official rules or procedures yet in place to govern the process, giving far-right efforts like the Convention of States the opportunity to design a forum with their own set of rules that allows non-elected delegates to commandeer federal policymaking and shrink the power of the federal government, overhauling the U.S. Constitution.

A major takeaway from this workshop was the importance of state-level organizing across the pro-democracy coalition. To underscore this, we discussed current efforts in Louisiana, where calling a Constitutional Convention is a top priority for the Republican supermajority. Governor Jeff Landry made a Constitutional Convention – composed of the existing state legislatures and 37 delegates of the governor’s own choosing – a central part of his legislative agenda. The Louisiana House of Representatives voted in June to call a Convention in August 2024, but the state Senate blocked it because they objected to speed, lack of transparency and the convention design. Although the efforts for a formal Constitutional Convention have stalled, the Louisiana Legislature hosted a joint committee on July 11 to to discuss amendments that would be raised at a so called modified Constitutional Convention or a special session on revenue. Democracy2076 is committed to knowledge sharing and collaboration, and at our event, HousingNOLA shared the polling and messaging strategies they’ve deployed in Louisiana to combat these efforts in their state so that participants in other states could learn from their efforts.

Before Republican supermajorities in statehouses have the organizing power of 34 states to call a Convention, there are protective measures we can take to ensure the process is democratic that participants have begun organizing around coming out of the convening.

Professor Pozen shared how a well-designed Constitutional Convention can be a powerful forum for democracy. To get there, our organizing efforts for long-term democratic progress need to include more immediate efforts to drive a fair and productive Constitutional Convention. To date, the pro-democracy field has been opposed to any national Convention efforts; focusing on counter efforts at the state-level is a solution to make progress without completely ceding the strategy. This workshop improved participants’ knowledge of far-right efforts and the strategies to reframe these opportunities to advance our own goals:

Prior to the convening, we gauged participants’ knowledge of these efforts:

• On a scale of 1 (no idea) to 5 (I am an expert), how familiar are you with the emerging strategy on Constitutional Conventions, including the "Convention of States," and the plan for a statewide Constitutional Convention in Louisiana? 
• The average response from 55 respondents was 2.66

After this session, we reevaluated their preparedness to confront these forces:

• On a scale of 1 (no better prepared) to 5 (I’m ready!), do you feel better prepared for you and your organization to respond, should the Constitutional Convention or state-wide Constitutional Conventions proceed in the coming years? 
• The average response from 44 respondents was 3.6

Additional analysis on participants’ takeaways from this session can be found in the Insights and Impact section here.

Workshop Three: Infrastructure Analysis

After imaging pathways to ratification and discussing the current political environment of oppositional constitutional change efforts, we analyzed the campaign infrastructure necessary to support campaigns to ratify guaranteed rights, Congressional reform, and electoral reform. Participants worked in six groups, two aligned to each amendment category, considering the following categories of campaign infrastructure: 

• Research and Requirements for Administration
• Organizational allies, including funders 
• Existing pilot programs 
• Current federal investment 
• Intersecting issues/Related work
• Legal infrastructure 
• Public support
• Opposition 

A detailed table of each group’s considerations can be found here. As shown in the table, analysis of existing assets and gaps in infrastructure varied significantly across the groups; while some of this can be attributed to variance in participants’ knowledge of each issue’s landscape, there is a substantive difference in the established infrastructure between the categories. Across all three issues, each group mentioned the need for more investment in building a narrative of support for reform. 

Guaranteed Rights
At our December 2023 convening, we discussed several ideas that could fall under the Guaranteed Rights umbrella, including universal rights to health, full employment, and collective bargaining, and implementing a wealth tax, maximum income ratio, or alternative measures of economic growth than those currently used. In this workshop, participants mapped the campaign infrastructure as it relates to universal basic income and a right to housing. Due to scheduling conflicts, there were no participants at the table familiar with the advocacy landscape to pass Guaranteed Rights, and those who were there lacked the knowledge of national infrastructure, which led them to identify gaps that actually don't exist. The group discussing a right to housing mentioned the onus on Congress to set requirements for affordable housing – a gap that depends on Congressional efficacy and should be considered in the potential sequencing and messaging of constitutional amendment campaigns. 

Congressional Reform
At our December 2023 convening, we discussed several types of amendments that could fall under the Congressional Reform umbrella but did not map the infrastructure for, including enacting quotas for underrepresented populations (specifically blue-collar workers) in the legislature, independent redistricting boards, and citizen assemblies. For this activity, Congressional Reform Group 1 focused both on Abolishing the Senate and Expanding the House of Representatives. Congressional Reform Group 2 focused only on Abolishing the Senate. 

This area has the least infrastructure by far. Notably, both of the groups discussing the landscape of Congressional reform discussed the impact of funding on the ecosystem, while the Guaranteed Rights and Electoral Reform groups did not. Participants from POPVOX Foundation, Fix Our House, and the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy also mentioned that the organizations working on internal modernization are largely disconnected from organizations working on structural reform — which are in turn separate from groups advocating for structural reform in the service of passing a particular policy agenda. Both of the former groups highlighted the need for narrative work: while Americans recognize the dysfunction in Congress, they may not understand either the capacity and modernization challenges that hinder Congressional effectiveness, or the structural factors contributing to a Congress incapable of acting on issues where there is broad public support. Furthermore, while there is a growing interest in the broader modernization of Congress, there is little institutional momentum to examine the structure of Congress or policymaking processes as part of those efforts, especially in ways that require Constitutional amendments.

These groups identified several areas of related work (e.g., Filibuster reform, preventing political violence, improving representative government) that could potentially drive public support for more structural reforms. Interestingly, campaign finance reform emerged in this conversation, rather than under Electoral Reform efforts. This demonstrates the intersectionality of these issues and the potential for shared infrastructure in campaigns to advance these reforms. 

Electoral Reform 
There were ideas discussed in December (and were included in the pre-reads) for which we didn’t map the infrastructure including: campaign finance reform (though the impact was discussed some by the Congress groups), national referenda, residency voting, and the right to vote. Participants assigned to this amendment category to map the infrastructure chose to focus on Ranked-Choice Voting and Citizen Assemblies (Group 1) and Electoral College Reform (Group 2).

Several participants in the room work at national organizations dedicated to electoral reform, including Rank the Vote, American Promise, End Citizens United, and the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College (which focuses on citizen’s assemblies). In their discussions, participants were less focused on strategies to pass constitutional amendments and more on existing state and local campaigns for ranked-choice voting and citizen assemblies. This explains some of the gaps in discussion where these groups didn’t identify the research, legal infrastructure, or related work for ranked-choice voting, citizen assemblies, or abolishing the Electoral College. For other electoral reforms that they didn’t focus on in this workshop, such as voting rights and election administration, there is ample national campaign infrastructure. Both groups discussing infrastructure for electoral reform identified national organizations dedicated to these other issues as potential allies, as well as shared narratives of voters’ power and civic duty, to support RCV, citizen assemblies, and Electoral College reforms.

One area of disagreement that surfaced for one of the groups was how large of an issue gerrymandering will be in the future as we have an increasingly elderly population. Here again, participants noted the potential for party alignment shifts by 2076 and the impact on red, blue, and purple states.

Workshop Four: Sustainability and Budgeting for 50-year Plan

In this session, we explored potential funding models and developed strategic budget-related plans for long-term sustainability of movements. The workshop opened with a conversation with experts from True North Research Group and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, where we discussed insights into the right’s strategy for influencing the judiciary: generous funding, leveraging the power of think tanks, academic spaces, and upwardly mobile career pipelines for young, future leaders of the movement. We also heard about the challenges of prioritizing long-term, strategic planning while operating in an environment that requires rapid response to current issues. To equip participants with the tools to futurecast their advocacy in this space, participants were then divided into six groups, two groups aligned to each of three time horizons: 15 years, 30 years, and 50 years, where they brainstormed how to effectively deploy funding over their assigned timeline. 

We first asked participants what they would plan to do with unlimited funding. When analyzing their responses, we identified several common categories across their budgets, including pilot programs, landscape, election administration, investing in our institutions, national organizational planning/state regranting, state power building, civic education, and narrative work. A table of each group’s high-level budget breakdown can be found here (Table here). Many of our participants work across these areas at the state and national levels and have issue-area expertise about needed resources, but fewer have expertise on narrative change. In our future areas of work, we will engage storytelling and culture change leaders to help us identify the gaps in the pro-democracy narrative environment and strategize Imagining 2076 – our plans to facilitate cultural buy-in for a Constitution for 2076 through future-oriented storytelling about the promise and possibilities of America. 

Insights, Challenges, and Risks: 

• In five of the six time horizon groups, there is an inverse correlation between time and money: the more time we have, the less money it takes. This illustrates the need for long-term, strategic investment that will cost less in the long-run and maximize impact across the field. 

• Across time horizons, participants shared the sentiment that funders have a tremendous amount of power to set the agenda for the field’s priorities and the need for philanthropy to be reimagined for a more equitable future. They articulated the need to set standardized benchmarks and new ways to show the value of investment, in order to relieve organizations of administrative-heavy and time consuming reports. 

• One group highlighted the importance of C4 dollars in this work and raised the possible risk that if institutions do not reform proactively, they will need to be rehabilitated. They suggested we can mitigate risk by propping up local media and state progressive legal organizations. 

• While discussing long-term budget planning, some identified near-term risks that would affect their 50-year campaign planning, including the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024 and the realization of his stated objectives to eliminate protective, nonpartisan, stabilizing forces of American institutions, such as the Office of Personnel Management. They also raised the possible risks of gerrymandering efforts preventing political efficacy and substantive representation in Congress, and the Electoral College overturning the popular vote in a Presidential election. Our examination of congressional and Electoral Reforms seek to mitigate these risks.

• Folks highlighted the need to keep an eye out for the “what-ifs” of recession, massive natural disaster, and political uprising. Democracy 2076’s strategic foresight exercises and scenario planning helps the field anticipate the circumstances that give way to these “what-ifs” and mitigate the worst possible outcomes as well as prepare for the opportunities they may present.

A Constitution for 2076

Moving forward, we see three primary goals for this particular aspect of Democracy 2076’s constitutional reform strategy.

First — and most importantly — we need to continue helping our diverse group of participants believe that constitutional reform is possible. In order to develop and strengthen our strategies and landscape analysis, we need to utilize processes of co-creation with our partners to ensure that this work is a viable pathway to a more representative, responsive, and effective form of governance. This will be achieved, in part, by:

• Socializing the importance of long-term planning and future visioning work to ensure that partners and funders understand the value of engaging with future-looking programs for their respective missions, and for our broader movement.
• Supporting partners in bringing future-oriented work and the possibility of constitutional reform to their organizations, coalitions, and communities by leading replications of our process for others. Already, we have conducted replications of our process for organizations like Congress 2076 in partnership with POPVOX Foundation and Bertelsmann Foundation, and have received requests to potentially assist in several more replications in the coming year.

Secondly and simultaneously, we are working to revise and refine our strategies and potential landscapes for constitutional reform — which began during this convening — with the hope being that by the time we bring participants back together next year, we will have a more concrete, well-researched strategy to iterate on and improve. Doing this will require:

• Ensuring that our various partners see their work clearly represented in the strategies we are proposing. Based on surveys from this convening, participants saw their work moderately represented in our proposed reform strategies, but with room for improvement. We must make clear in future convenings that 1) these constitutional changes are beneficial to participants’ respective issue areas and the communities they serve and 2) their efforts — while distinct and diverse — are all essential for the larger strategy of constitutional reform.
• Spending Democracy 2076’s organizational time and capacity to flesh out the strategies devised of and proposed by participants at this convening. We need to dig in deeper to the gaps identified by participants — both in capacity and in participation (i.e. who wasn’t in the room that needed to be?). In order for this work to progress, it is crucial to distinguish what are gaps in the field to fill vs. gaps in awareness that adequate bridge-building and relationship-building can address.

Imagining 2076 and Pro-Democracy Political Coalitions in 2076

Finally, we are continuing to develop the two additional strategic prongs of Democracy 2076’s larger body of work in ways that are complementary and collaborative with A Constitution for 2076:

Imagining 2076

We need future-oriented stories to facilitate cultural buy-in to a Constitution for 2076. In recent years, Hollywood has shifted from more optimistic depictions of the future (e.g., Star Trek) to more dystopian depictions of the future (e.g., Hunger Games and the Last of Us). Similarly, there has been an increase in depictions of authoritarian tactics in portrayals of government (e.g., Scandal, House of Cards, Veep) and a decrease in portrayals of representative, responsive and effective government (e.g., West Wing). Since only 59% of Americans said they took a civics education class in high school and 38% of Americans said they often or sometimes avoid the news in 2022 with only 42% saying they trust most news most of the time, Hollywood plays an essential role in developing their understanding of government.

In our conversations about infrastructure and resource gaps, participants highlighted the need for greater investment in the narrative environment that could drive buy-in for constitutional change. Democracy 2076, along with our partner, Harmony Labs, is conducting content analysis of effective democracy in popular media to measure the results against trends in declining public trust and optimism about the future over the last 25 years. By examining the impact of these portrayals of present and future on audience attitudes towards our political system and civic engagement, we can ensure we have the socio-cultural momentum and participation needed to ensure A Constitution for 2076’s success.

Pro-Democracy Political Coalitions in 2076

Campaigns for pro-democracy constitutional change require pro-democracy political parties. Historically, American political coalitions realign approximately every 30 years. We are currently living through a realignment that is almost complete, likely leading to a party with weak commitments for democracy for the next 30 years. We have an opportunity — with substantial and coordinated cross-sector interventions — to shape the next political realignment to ensure pro-democracy tenets are at the core of the next political realignment. Protect Democracy and the American Political Science Association’s recent report predicts that coalitions could realign around pro-democracy issues, particularly if there is pressure from social movements to do so, but there is currently little active advocacy around understanding and influencing that realignment.

As several groups identified in their population scenario maps in Workshop One, shifting political party alignments over the next 50 years will affect the advocacy environment for constitutional change. In partnership with Horizon 2045, Democracy 2076 plans to run a participatory strategic foresight process on the future of U.S. political parties to assess what issues may divide the parties, which voters are in each party, and whether the parties are pro-democracy or not. We will bring together a coalition of organizers (especially those working with communities of color susceptible to authoritarian appeals), experts in authoritarianism, and pollsters to participate in the strategic foresight process to ensure our findings are informed by those best situated to utilize them. Ultimately, we can use this process to create an early warning system to identify where interventions could be useful so that when opportunities to guide our next political realignment emerge, that we have the tools and resources needed to ensure pro-democracy future political coalitions.

Anticipated Challenges and Future Learnings

Navigating the needs of a diverse coalition to enact structural constitutional change

It was clear from participant responses in our end survey that they found the diversity of the convening to be a tremendous asset: for potential future partnerships, new innovative ideas and perspectives, and to ensure that our gatherings help to uphold the broad tent needed to amend our Constitution. However, bringing many different voices into the same space is not without its challenges, as we’ve seen throughout the history of similar political movements. 

We must continue to balance holding space for valid distinctions of perspective — where individuals and organizations were differently focused on making impact and how they understood various linchpins of theories of change — while orienting the coalition towards a shared goal. Often, despite pursuing vastly different strategies, participants shared overwhelmingly similar goals, providing valuable space for dialogue and bridging. 

There are many examples to learn from of cross-ideological and cross-perspective coalitions working together towards similar goals. By highlighting such examples, we can help participants understand how their various areas of expertise and influence complement and empower each other towards a broader mission. We see this less as a challenge and more as an opportunity for strategic and intentional facilitation and advocacy.  

Continually grounding our work in imaginative practices while contending with the tangible realities of our systems (electoral and otherwise)

Another set of dynamics we anticipate needing to balance is the tension between our lived political realities and the imaginative practices we are encouraging. The next six to twelve months will be decisive and full of urgency — some warranted, others less so — regarding the fate of our democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. Furthermore, we need to acknowledge the marginalization, suffering, and oppression of certain groups that persists under our current systems. Our partners that are working more directly with election work will understandably be (and in many cases, already are) strapped for capacity and resources. Partners working to mitigate harm face real threats to their safety and the populations they serve are often subjected to violence. How we intentionally acknowledge the immediacy and importance of our present moment while continuing to lay the groundwork for the future will be essential.

During our time together, some participants voiced feedback about how we could more explicitly name how these types of constitutional reforms benefited marginalized groups, and how the political dynamics we were attempting to name and help improve are deeply interwoven with systems of misogyny, anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments. We will take this feedback forward with us into upcoming convenings and think about where and how we can be more intentional about not only who is in the room, but how their work is amplified within our programming and how we can learn from the histories of movements and progress (or lack thereof) around these issues. 

As one participant remarked, ““We are living in someone else’s 50 year timeline — it’s time to create our own.” There is already a non-democratic, authoritarian 50-year vision of how to transform our Constitution that is being resourced and rolled out. We have a chance to build something different for our future, and to begin creating that today. Previous constitutional changes have come at pivotal periods in American history, when tensions have impelled the need for structural change, such as during Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and the Progressive Era. With the technological industrial shifts and polarization of the last decade, we are poised for similar political innovation. The opportunity is there, provided the democracy movement has the resources and support to take advantage of it.

Ensuring that this type of work is well-resourced by funders and host organizations

As participants identified at both the December and June convenings, the most common barrier to advancing the long-term goals of their organizations is lack of funding and time. In comparison to other issue-based movements, the democracy field has significantly less funding and infrastructure to support the various entities that drive it forward. To engage in work with a time horizon longer than one or even two election cycles requires consistent intellectual, time and financial commitments from the philanthropic sector.

We see as core to our efforts ensuring that not only does Democracy 2076 have the resources it needs to continue its work, but that our partners have the financial runways and institutional support needed from the broader philanthropic sector in order to invest in this type of essential long-term planning.