Nebraska becomes 17th state calling for convention to amend U.S. Constitution

I've conducted some research in this regard, and I consider this possibility of this occurring to be around 5%.
Rich

Hmm. I didn't expect Nebraska to want to amend the Constitution but "In the resolution, the Nebraska Legislature, like other states, proposes amendments that will "impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress."" Now I see why they want to. And also not surprised this: "Opponents of the resolution in the Nebraska Legislature argued there would be no way to impose limits on the convention, according to the Omaha World-Herald. They also said there is nothing that details how the convention would be structured, such as if every state would have one vote or if votes would be proportional to population."

That there's literally no structure to the convention. Definitely not surprising.

God I hope this idiocy never happens.

We have been seeing a movement to call for a "Convention of the States" for over a decade, almost entirely from conservative self-styled "patriots" who think they would be able to use such convention to clarify and strengthen certain elements of the Constitution -- mostly they expect changes like dropping the archaic "Militia clause" from the Second Amendment. Many want to add so-called "Term Limits" for congress. In other groups there are a litany of other ideas, some that are even controversial among conservatives, such as restricting Birthright Citizenship to only children born of parents who are legally in the country.

Many of the ideas behind the conservative push for a Convention of the States are ideas that I would support or at least consider, but a Convention of the States is an extremely dangerous idea.

Every time I have seen groups advocating a Convention of the States, they have presented a false picture of what such a Convention would look like and what it could do. For example, Nebraska wants the Convention to "impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress." But is that what a Convention would do? Maybe, maybe not!

The problem is that we don't know what a Convention of the States would look like or what it would do. There has never been a Convention of the States under Article V of the Constitution and although Article V describes a process for calling a Convention of the States, it does NOT say anything about how such a convention would be composed or how it would proceed.

Conservatives like to describe a Convention of the States that would be limited to considering the proposals listed in the call and where each state would have equal representation. That Red State Majority image is a pipe dream that is not supported by Article V in any way.

Because Article V says Congress shall call the convention but does not include any rules for the composition of such a convention, it will be up to Congress to decide what the convention would look like. Can you really imagine any 21st Century Congress calling a convention where Rhode Island and California were equal? Not a chance! Much more likely, states would be represented proportionally by population much like the House of Representatives, or perhaps some mixed system similar to the Electoral College. It would even be possible for Congress to declare itself the Convention of the States. So yes, any Convention of the States is far more likely to be either Blue or at best Purple rather than Red.

The second problem is that Article V does not put any limits on what a Convention of the States may do or consider. Again, conservatives expect a Convention that is limited to voting up or down specific changes laid out in their dream of a call for such a convention. But again Article V does not specify any such limitation and the only precedent absolutely contradicts this thought.

Yes, I said "the only precedent" -- there has never been any Convention of the States called under Article V of the Constitution. But there have been previous conventions of the states. The first drafted and adopted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. The next, which gives us our best example of what such a convention can do, chose to throw out the entire document creating the structure of the United States of America (the Articles of Confederation) and replace that entire document with a completely new document describing an entirely new structure. There is absolutely nothing in Article V that would prevent a Convention of the States from proposing an entirely new constitution! Are you ready for a Woke constitution?

The only redeeming aspect of Article V is that whatever might be proposed by such a Convention of the States would still need to be ratified by the states, but we have already seen that Congress can bend the rules for ratification of amendments to the constitution.