Can the US House of Representatives function without a speaker or with a speaker with limited power?

A way to let the house pass any bill that gets enough votes, without leadership involement.

A way to let the house pass any bill that gets enough votes, without leadership involement.

Can the US House of Representatives function without a speaker or with a speaker with limited power?

Expanding on a previous thought.

The house should adopt a new method of passing laws & resolutions:

  • There will be a server that anyone can read from and any member of the house can upload a proposed law to.

  • Any bill that passes the Senate is immediately uploaded to the server without modification.

  • The text of the bill will then be hashed to produce a cryptographic checksum used to identify a law.

  • Any member can amend (modify) a bill, which produces a new identifier.

  • Any member can vote in favor of any bill (identified by checksum) electronicly via secure methods. That vote is public.

  • Any member may un-vote for a bill they have already voted for via the same procedure. This action also goes into the public record.

  • If a bill gets 218 (=floor(N/2)+1) votes in favor (at the same time), it is passed the house and sent to the Senate.

  • Bills are deprecated at the end of the term. There may be other ways of deprecating a bill.