Constitution

The other day I had a post blocked on Reddit because is was clearly AI-generated text. This was a little annoying as it was an overview of a spec which contained all the information I wished to convey in a well-ordered form. Ok, it was a bit annoying stylistically.

So I came up with a workaround. I got Claude to read 262 of my blog posts, and boil them down into a set of rules ( https://github.com/danja/jigdaw/blob/main/docs/danify.md ). Claude then used those rules to rewrite the opening of the US Constitution (Article I, Sections 1 and 2) as if I'd written it. I've not checked it against a lawyer.

Article I, Section 1

Right, first thing. All the law-making power in this setup goes to a Congress. It comes in two halves, a Senate and a House of Representatives. That's it, nobody else gets to make laws.

Article I, Section 2

The House is made up of members chosen every second year by the people of the states. Whoever is allowed to vote for the biggest chamber of their own state's legislature can vote for the House too. Simple enough, they just borrow the state's list.

To be a Representative you have to be at least 25, you must have been a US citizen for seven years, and you have to live in the state you're chosen for when the election comes round.

Next, how many seats each state gets, and how the tax bill gets split. Both go by population. Population means everyone who's free, including those bound to a term of service, but leaving out Indians who aren't taxed, plus three fifths of "all other Persons". Ew. That last bit is the enslaved, and it's every bit as grim as it sounds. The 14th Amendment later did away with it.

The head count happens within three years of the first meeting of Congress, then again every ten years, in whatever way Congress decides by law. There's a cap too: no more than one Representative for every 30,000 people, but every state gets at least one. Until the first count was done, the numbers were fixed as follows:

• New Hampshire, 3
• Massachusetts, 8
• Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1
• Connecticut, 5
• New York, 6
• New Jersey, 4
• Pennsylvania, 8
• Delaware, 1
• Maryland, 6
• Virginia, 10
• North Carolina, 5
• South Carolina, 5
• Georgia, 3

If a seat falls empty mid-term, the state's governor calls an election to fill it.

Last bit. The House picks its own Speaker and its other officers. It's also the only body that can impeach.