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Re:UK votes to leave EU by reillyse on Friday June 24, 2016 @01:34AM (#11966860)
and the US has the absolute worst recording on changing their constitution. The last amendment (the 27th) was ratified in 1992 and took nearly 203 years to become law. I think they should lower the barriers to getting stuff done.
Re:UK votes to leave EU by ams6110 on Friday June 24, 2016 @01:47AM (#11966950)
Absolutely not. Changing the structural framwork of the nation is not something to be done based on an issue's short term popularity. If the issue can maintain consistent support for a decade or more that's a lot better signal that it might be a good long-term idea.
Re:UK votes to leave EU by reillyse on Friday June 24, 2016 @02:36AM (#11967199)
Sure, but 2 centuries is a little long.
Re:UK votes to leave EU by peyton on Friday June 24, 2016 @03:20AM (#11967437)
Is there another current government that's older than 2 centuries? I think we made a tradeoff for stability. Arguably that worked out well.
Re:UK votes to leave EU by lmm on Friday June 24, 2016 @08:40AM (#11969303)
The UK government is continuous from at least 1688 and arguably earlier.
Re:UK votes to leave EU by tboettch on Friday June 24, 2016 @05:34PM (#11973670)
What an incredibly misleading statement. Even a minimal review of the history[1] shows that the 27th amendment was not under consideration for 203 years; rather, it was originally proposed in 1789, and interest in it was not revived for roughly 200 years.

As to the other amendments[2], 203 years is an extreme and unrepresentative outlier. The original bill of rights took a little over 2 years to ratify, and nearly all of the rest have taken under 1.5 years. The only one to take longer than 3 years was the highly controversial 16th amendment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit...

Re:UK votes to leave EU by reillyse on Sunday June 26, 2016 @11:47PM (#11984115)
The wikipedia article you quote doesn't back up your claim. In fact quite the opposite.

From the article. 1) The 27th amendment was first introduced in the house in 1789. It was first ratified by a state in 1789 "Maryland – December 19, 1789" It was last ratified in 1992 "Michigan – May 7, 1992"