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The U.S. Constitution has 27 amendments; each was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states.
However, the Constitution sets forth another procedure, never before used, for amending the Constitution. At the request of two thirds of the states, a constitutional convention would be held, at which amendments could be proposed. Any proposals would become part of the Constitution if three fourths of the states ratified them, either at state conventions or in the state legislatures.
Currently, 27 of the needed 34 states have petitioned Congress for a constitutional convention, for the ostensible purpose of writing a balanced-budget amendment (BBA). However, the convention might propose other changes in addition or instead of a BBA—even a total rewrite of the Constitution—if 38 states agreed, the changes would become law.
In November, legislators from 30 states met in Salt Lake City to discuss the matter.
- Forbes article from 2014 (mirror)
- John Birch Society (has a map)
- utahpolicy.com
- Deseret News
- Yellowhammer News
- The Universe—Brigham Young University
- San Francisco Chronicle
- KSTU-TV
- The Columbian
- Washington Post blog about historical attempts at constitutional conventions
- The Spokesman-Review
(Score: 2) by naubol on Friday December 11 2015, @05:37PM
Would you not agree that those with money are able to buy significantly more representation? There are other activities which would support a candidate and would be deemed illegal, such as systematically calling known opposition voters on election day to tell them their loved ones are hospitalized, but this is more obviously speech. The idea behind speech was to enable people to have a marketplace of ideas where hopefully it caused the ideas to improve by a metric that was seen as for the common good. Do you contend that unlimited campaign finance doesn't have a deleterious affect by shifting the metric for quality of ideas much more to being about which idea benefits an oligarchic minority in the short term?
Money is not speech, because it has the power to capture actual honest to god speech. On some level, agitprop is a clear and present danger and we must deal with it, and campaign finance reform is one attempt at doing that without trying to identify propaganda speech or severely curtail corporate media. Our political system was designed before entities and people could wield so much social and political power due to technological advances. We must find a way to adapt to this new reality. We may not have the language, ... unlimited campaign donations are weapons of intense power in a war over the distribution of resources. Agitprop works and it is not going to magically stop working. We must talk about this issue on that level first, as campaign finance restrictions are merely one attempt at a solution. Do you not agree that there is a problem? What would your solution be?
As an amusing aside, is it not the height of irony that the textual originalist found speech == money? I don't see that in my dictionary and I'm pretty positive that wasn't what Madison intended.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 11 2015, @06:56PM
Do you contend that unlimited campaign finance doesn't have a deleterious affect by shifting the metric for quality of ideas much more to being about which idea benefits an oligarchic minority in the short term?
Sure, but the effect is less significant than advertised. First, it's quite easy legally to create such things in the complete absence of money via passing laws/regulations for votes. For example, labor unions, large groups of people with common interests (farmers, gun owners), and high employment businesses with political interests. Then there are the illegal means of bribing politicians which would work moderately better (since limited or no cash means politicians have a lower price tag as a whole by this means).
Second, even in the presence of the First Amendment and corporate personhood, there are a number of constitutional ways to limit the otherwise unlimited such as making all such donations public knowledge, capping the donation size, restricting movement of government employees from decision making positions in government to parties affected by those decisions, and imposing and enforcing harsher criminal and civil punishments for corruption and election/voting misconduct/gross incompetence.