Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to temporarily fill vacancies in the House of Representatives to further the continuity of Congress.

Core Policy Mechanism Top 1

Temporary House Vacancy Succession via Member-Designated Lists

Creates a constitutional process for temporarily filling House seats when a member dies. Each Representative must pre-designate at least five qualified successors; a governor selects from that list within ten days, and the Speaker seats the replacement until a special election is held.

• Population Scope Medium Directly binds all sitting and future House Representatives (435 seats) and the governors of states with vacancies — a narrow institutional population, though indirectly every congressional district is affected.
• Budgetary Magnitude Low Neither authorizes nor appropriates any funds and has no identifiable dollar amount or funding stream.
• Legal / Regulatory Depth High Amends the Constitution itself to create new binding duties on Representatives, governors, and the Speaker — a substantive restructuring of how House vacancies are filled that overrides existing law at the highest legal tier.
• Degree of Discretion Granted Medium Governors must act within a mandatory 10-day window but retain discretion to choose any one of at least five pre-approved designees, making the selection bounded but not ministerial.
• Implementation & Enforcement Burden Low Compliance is self-executing through institutional actors (Representatives file lists at oath, the Speaker seats the appointee) with no new enforcement infrastructure, penalties, or adjudicatory mechanism required.
• Temporal Commitment High Once ratified, binds all future Congresses and state executives indefinitely with no expiration, sunset, or mandatory reauthorization.