Aggressive New Scheme Exposes Article V Convention Lobby
Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides two methods for amending, or making changes to, the Constitution.
The first method (and the only method used for all 27 amendments to the Constitution) is when “two thirds of both Houses [in Congress; the House of Representatives and Senate] … propose Amendments” and those amendments are subsequently “ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”
The second method for amending the Constitution, which has never been used, is when “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, [the Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments,” followed by the same mode of ratification — assuming that the delegates to the Convention do not exceed the scope of their commissions and create their own new mode of ratification (a likely possibility). Historically, this “Convention for proposing Amendments” has been referred to as a federal constitutional convention (Con-Con), and only recently has also been referred to as a “Convention of States” (COS) — not to be confused with the organization of the same name, the Convention of States Project / Convention of States Action.
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