Rewriting Ourselves: Government Reform, Civic Renewal, and AI’s Role in Oregon’s Future
Read Time: ~1,500 words; about 7-10 minutes
Introduction: Reading Our Own Rules
Have you ever sat down to read our nation’s founding document: the U.S. Constitution?
It's doable in one sitting, and it's not that long. There are some boring sections in Article I, with details on the exact workings of Congress, but once you get past that, the rest gets easier. Articles II and III deal with the Executive and Judicial branches, respectively, and each gets shorter, before a few final Articles IV-VII. Then, the amendments are quite easy to read, as the English gets progressively more modern. Then you're done.
The U.S. Constitution is about 7.500 words; the original before amendments was only 4,500 words. Reading at an average pace of 200-250 words/minute, it would take about 30-40 minutes to read. All Americans should read our Constitution.
But how many of us have read our state’s constitution?
In recent weeks, contemplating a run for Oregon’s Governor, I looked at how long Oregon's Constitution was, intending to read it. I’ll admit: while I’ve been a resident of five states in my life, I’d never sat down to read any of their state Constitutions.
Too Long; Didn’t Read: Why Oregon’s Constitution Needs a Rewrite (and how AI Can Help!)
I expected Oregon’s Constitution to be roughly the length of the U.S. Constitution. How wrong I was! Oregon's Constitution is just under 50,000 words: about the length of a short book or slim nonfiction work! At the same reading pace (200-250 words/min), it would take an average reader 3-4 hours to read. It gets worse, too, as Oregon's Constitution has sections that read more like actual legislative statutes (codified laws), rather than a constitution meant for the average resident.
Oregon's Constitution is terribly long, but what’s worse is that it's not unique problem. Every U.S. state has a constitution and a three-branch government modeled on our federal branches, but they differ in how clearly that’s written down — and how messy the document has become. Among the 50 constitutions, after Alabama (see below), the next nine longest belong to Texas (92,000 words), Oklahoma (85,000), Missouri (85,000), Colorado (84,000), California (77,000), Louisiana (76,000), Ohio (63,000), Arkansas (59,000). Oregon takes the #10 longest spot at its 49,430 word count. On the short end of the list, the shortest constitutions include Vermont (8,500 words), Iowa (11,000), Rhode Island (11,400), Indiana (11,600), and Minnesota (12,000). Many of the states with shorter constitutions trimmed or replaced old charters in the latter half of the 20th century to modernize and shorten their documents.
The median (most common) length of a state constitution is about 27,000 words, but the average (mean) is closer to 42,000 words, pulled up by those very large outliers like the top states.
And then we get to Alabama.
Alabama’s Constitution is worth its own paragraph, because it runs between 369,000-402,000 words. Sources vary! Not only is Alabama’s constitution is literally the longest state constitution in the world, it’s probably the longest ever written constitution! This is because of thousands of local amendments, centralized power at the state level, and thousands of pages of county-level minutiae. With all due respect, Alabama, you’ve always been our nation’s problem child…
What a Governor Can—and Should—Do About It
Let’s turn back to Oregon. While a state’s legislature — and not its executive branch — must be the one to change its laws and amend its constitution, there’s still a lot that the executive or Governor could do. Governors have enormous power on where to spend their time and policy focus, and they have the publicity of the pulpit to help: the public platform/voice of the Governor, much like a church pulpit historically gave a speaker moral authority. Governors can give speeches, press events, and lead public opinion — steering the state’s legislature towards positive change, especially if they’re elected with broad support.
Part of my agenda in the first year would include trimming down our State’s Constitution. (As we do that, we should discuss the concept of redrawing state lines — both nationwide and with Oregon’s neighbors.) The goal for our constitution should be a document that the average Oregonian could read and understand, a document citizens could refer to, teach their kids, and feel connected to. It’s fine for our state laws to be detailed and technical, but the constitution itself should be clear and user-friendly. Oregon currently has the 10th longest state constitution in our nation, which puts us in the majority of states with bloated charters that minimize civic engagement. We can model more readable states and make ours better.
AI: A Powerful Tool for Civic Renewal
And as it so happens, we now have a modern tool that can help with a lot of this work: artificial intelligence (AI). While a full discussion of AI is well outside the scope of this post, it's worth a quick introductory review. Given the last few years, the most well known AI product/technology is the "large language model", or LLM. The LLM is the core technology behind so-called "chat-bot" products like chatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Grox, and others.
Let's get the obvious out of the way: AI is often labeled with extremes, whether positive or negative. Those discussing it often even sound religious in their rhetoric for or against it — opinions range from it will save our civilization and usher in a utopia! all the way to it will destroy our economy and, once sentient, enslave or destroy humanity!
My own opinion on the future of AI: it may be good, it may be bad. “Maybe” — just maybe! AI products like LLMs are certainly going to replace a lot of jobs. However, human history is full of inventions that replaced whole sectors of work: the wheel revolutionized transport; the printing press democratized knowledge; steam and combustion engines powered industry and automobiles; and electricity, motors and generators, farming machinery, computers, and the internet all transformed how we live and work. The LLM is a modern tool. It’s a specific, individual form of a broader “AI” group of technologies, and the LLM is amazing at working with large blocks of information (and these days, no longer only textual information). LLMs can assist with researching, editing, writing, transforming data — and repeating this process over and over — and they can do that in any language, including programming languages.
Reimagining Civic Engagement with AI
And this is where we turn back to government.
Where do we often have an extreme excess of textual content? In government — specifically, in our laws! What modern lawyer — let alone average citizen — is familiar with all of their states' laws? No one. Indeed, state attorneys specialize for this very reason into criminal law, family law, business contract law, real-estate law, etc. State statutes, when in physical print, span volumes of encyclopedia-length books. Worse, it isn’t normal, everyday English; laws are heavy on jargon and difficult for seasoned professionals to understand it. It’s nearly impossible for lay citizens understand their state laws, and federal statutes can be worse. It's even difficult for lawmakers to write -- state lawmakers often come from diverse walks of life. (As our state lawmakers should; by contrast, for example, federal Senators often have careers as high-profile lawyers. I'd argue those are the very last career professionals we want writing federal legislation, but that's another aside.)
LLMs can help us revolutionize our civic involvement. Right now, regardless of your state, you could send this instruction to your LLM product of choice. Just fill in the brackets:
Help me craft new legislation on [your topic of interest, like maternity leave], in the language of my state's current statutes, but that helps me condense our current relevant chapters of state law, and also make the new statutes more easily understandable by the average resident. Before our first draft, please output 5-20 questions for me -- and I'll respond to them -- that can help us create the first draft together.
If that prompt is followed by some focused writing and editing, a passionate citizen could draft and propose new state legislation on any in hours. Previously, that kind of work would have taken lawmakers scores of hours, and it would have been inaccessible to the average working citizen. That's precisely why civic engagement tends to be highest among retirees: it simply takes too much time. We need only look at voter turnout -- especially in non-Presidential elections -- to remind ourselves of how disengaged average citizens are from our civic responsibilities.
I’m certainly not here to guilt trip anyone, as I'm no model for the most involved citizen. The purpose of this post is to argue that these AI tools not only can help our lawmakers, but that they must. Better still, these tools can help citizens be more engaged in the civic process, and, best case, they could even support a revolution of American civic involvement. With AI tools assisting both lawmakers and citizens, our civic goals — redrawing state lines, merging statutes, removing outdated ones, and redesigning what’s relevant for each state’s residents — become well within reach.
Conclusion: Fewer Walls of Text, More Open Doors
AI certainly won’t save our country for us. But if we use these powerful tools wisely, they can help us read our own laws again, clean them up, and invite a million more Oregonians into the work of self-government. We can use AI to draft clearer laws, open up the intimidating black box of “legalese”, and rebuilt trust in a state government that actually looks and feels like us. That’s the spirit of my vision for New Oregon: fewer walls of text, more open doors. Less cynicism and more shared work. If this vision resonates with you, help me test it, build it, and prove it’s possible — chip in here.