Friends Of the Article V Convention

I am not sure that people fear a convention.  Rather, I think that most state parties are organized to prevent it.  The sin qua non of the movement is that state legislators will tire of federal interference and become amenable to calling a convention in a way that Congress cannot reform (with an identical call within a two year period).   Of course, having Congress pass legislation stating how a call would work would make it easier to call one.  When there are no rules, it is easy to ignore calls.  While almost every state has called for one time or another for a convention, such calls have been deemed to expire and no one has told the Congress any differently.

Irregardless of the rules, state and especially congressional district political committees all but make a convention call impossible.  Most state legislators and mayors want to one day run for Congress.  Members of Congress are no fools, they have made sure that their states are gerrymandered to keep their jobs and that the state assembly districts are also gerrymandered along similar lines.  This means that in VA08, where I live, for example, there are multiple state assembly districts and most of them have members of the same party as the Congressman, Jim Moran.  Indeed, for a long time, one of the Delegates was his brother, Brian, who only resigned to run for Governor.  These folks meet every quarter, along with other party operatives, in what is called the District 8 Democratic Committee.  Every congressional district has one.  While I am sure that there are districts where the Congressman is one party and the majority of state assembly members are another, I suspect that this is a rare event since they are elected by the same partisan voters.

To call or accept a call for convention, you need to capture a majority of the assembly members in 2/3rds of the states. For all practical purposes, this means that you need the congress members of at least two thirds of the states to go along with your call - which may be more doable than a 2/3rds majority of Congress - since the larger states may not consent to a call - however you need at least half of Congress to be in that block as well.

We can't do this by publicity stunt.  We need to identify members congressional district by congressional district - and given the current majority in power (the Democrats) and the tenor of most convention amendments (Republican/Libertarian/Constitutionalist), success is not likely.

It won't occur from appeals to truth or justice, but by doing hard counts and getting announced commitments at both the state and federal levels.

I suggest it is probably easier to organize a new party - or to capture one - although Sarah Palin & Co. are trying their best to sabatoge the GOP brand name.

Even though Term Limits and Campaign finance are the most obvious issues, which could even get some Democratic support (especially the latter), I suspect that no set of incumbents at the state or federal level will adopt them.