Maybe a bit off topic, but just a thought I had:
Assuming the majority of the community does want the SC to be reduced to 5 members (or any other amendment to the constitution that the current SC does not approve), and we want to avoid results like this
…under the current system, your suggestion really is one of the only reasonable solutions! And I think that’s for one pretty simple reason: the constitution does not allow for any form of direct democracy in amendments
This can obviously create problems when/if members of the SC take actions that differ from what their voters may have wanted (which we have already seen to an extent), or are in effect making decisions that might give them less power – or in this case, completely removing themself or some of their peers from office in the next election cycle
An aside
For the record, I’m not trying to imply the above is the reasoning for SC members voting against or abstaining for this proposal. I very much believe all of them made this decision based on what they honestly think is best for the future of the community and a functioning SC, and I think that’s evident by them publishing the vote specifics (which was also a direct criticism that @Gabriella439 voiced in her blogpost, so kudos!)
I think a good foundational solution to this, without radically changing how our governance works, would be to introduce a (Direct) Popular Initiative system for constitutional amendments. This would empower “Eligible Voters” to both directly propose and vote on amendments like this, which in turn would help bridge some gaps between what the SC wants and the community. Further, it would also give the community what I think to be a softer, finer grained “check” against the SC, rather than voters only being able to completely replace a SC member, even if it’s over single-policy issues like this
So, if we were to have some kind of coalition going into the election, pushing a singular policy, I really think this might be something to look into instead. Directly giving the community more power over solving these issues would be much easier than repeating these “electoral hacks” each time an issue like this comes up. It targets the roots of the problem rather than only the effects we see here