Along with a former state chief justice and an Eagle Scout constitutional scholar, we co-founded Friends of the Article V Convention and our site and its documents and commentary is easily viewable online.
I have watched anti-conventionist OpEds pop up all over the internet recently and the piece by The Good Men Project and writers Susan Lerner and Liz Krueger, parrot decades-old fears surrounding this subject.
While correct that monied interests from the right have been pushing for this for some time, there are also others who are not of that ilk. They are those who recognize the right of the people alive now to enter into formal discussion about what amendments might pivot the nation in a better direction from the current course.
The rules for the convention are up to delegates chosen or elected to represent their state. Naturally, with hundreds of people who don't know each other, paralimentary procedure would be adopted. With that, there are constitutional rules that apply to the Article V Convention, the same rules imposed on members of Congress when they/it propose amendments. Delegates will need to meet minimum requirement for becoming a member of Congress, and whatever is proposed must be approved by 2/3rds of that body in order to be passed from the convention. Then--one of the big rules surrounding the fears, myths and misinformation--is that proposals must go back to the Congress, which is then tasked with determining how proposals will be put to we the living (ratification via legislatures or mini-state conventions).
Whatever is proposed, and however put to the states, a proposal must garner 75%+ approval, thirty-eight states, or roughly seven out of ten Americans in agreement. 3/4ths approval is a principle that mathematically precludes partisan ideas from becoming a new amendment to the Constitution. If the Good Men Project and its writers would have you believe the monied right is going to tear up the Constitution at a convention, they are mistaken. What could the far right propose, as amendment language, that seven out of ten states would ratify? Answer: nothing. Even the right's pet amendment for a Balanced Budget Amendment has never received more that forty-five-percent approval in polls. Anything even slightly questionable will fail in today's contentious times. Yet, there are issues that have overwhelming and broad support.
The Article V Convention is nothing but alternate mode of proposal when things stop working in Congress; it's a non-binding deliberative assembly, and when it adjourns nothing about the Constitution will have changed other than it commencing a formal nationwide discussion about what we ought to do today based on what we now know.
What will come of it? Simply look at nationwide political polls of the past half century; the top issue is corruption and private money polluting public elections. I bet those at the Good Men Project would agree that dark money in public elections is not something good, yet it exists and is an ongoing threat to us all.
The Article V Convention, a proper noun, is the very institution meant to be used at a time like this, when special interests are tearing up common sense government and all the difficult work of centuries past. The Good Men Project is currently creating hysteria about the very thing to deliver us from these trying times.
Sincerely,
John De Herrera
co-founder FOAVC
