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YSK Article Five of the United States Constitution
(en.wikipedia.org)
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this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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You need to look at it a bit differently: it's not that 38 states are needed to approve amendments, but rather that only 13 states are needed to block them. And Republicans have been very effective at electing politicians at the state level. Republicans have total control of 28 State Legislatures, and also hold the Governor's seat in 23 of them.
So, any amendment that manages to get through Congress (and the filibuster) will have to be approved by a bunch of these State Republicans. So pretty much any policy that that can be considered liberal will be DOA.
In fact, Democrats have more to worry about in the other direction. They only hold 18 State Legislatures, holding the Governor's seat in 16 of them. That is perilously close to the threshold of not being able to block amendments. If Democrats lose just a few more of those safe states, the the next time Republicans hold majorities in the House and Senate, they may be able to force amendments through that the blue states don't like.
(Source: https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/state-partisan-composition)
Seems like the "state-ratifying conventions" route is the only thing that has a chance of working, and that's ignoring that the Constitution doesn't regulate them.
Although, seeing as an amendment need 2/3rds of each chamber of Congress to pass, regardless of sending it to the legislatures or conventions (not for the convention to propose amendments), could Congress use that veto-proof majority to pass a law regulating conventions?
Whatever the idea, pretty sure this ends up in the Supreme Court regardless?
... is it weird that I've been thinking about this for the last decade? I'm not even American.
There are no rules at all to a constitutional convention, any rules are set by the delegates themselves. The last time we had one, they were charged with revising the Articles of Confederation, and decided to rip the whole thing up and write the Constitution. And this time, they have an official ruling that "money is speech", which will guarantee a ton of corporate cash flowing in to influence it.
Conservatives here have been looking to the convention process as a way to rip up parts of the Constitution they don't like. They can rewrite anything they want, and revoke rights we've had for hundreds of years. Yes, they still need 38 states to adopt it in the end, but as I covered above, they have complete control of many of the states they need to accomplish this.
And if this happens, what happens to the 12 Liberal states who do not go along with these changes? They will likely just leave, and make their own new country, with the original principles intact.
At least the amendment process only changes one thing at a time. A convention will blow it all up, and likely result in the country splitting in two. The only bright spot may be that it might be done without resorting to a civil war first.
I agree with everything you said, but I'm not talking about conventions to propose amendments, I'm talking about the ones to ratify amendments. Could a Democratic Congress with 2/3rds of each chamber pass a veto-proof law to regulate the ratifying conventions, then pass amendments specifying that they must be ratified by conventions, similar to how prohibition was repealed? As I understand it, the convention route was created by the founding fathers specifically in case they needed to bypass state legislatures.
How many state legislatures will vote no against a higher federal minimum wage? How many state legislatures will vote no against banning corporate political free speech?
https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wages
34 states have set wages above the Federal minimum, which means that 16 feel the Federal minimum is not too low.
A ton. Where have you been the last 20 years?