Posted on 11/18/2015 3:34:40 PM PST by cotton1706
The Assembly of State Legislatures (ASL) has adjourned from its latest meeting, still without having produced a set of rules for an Article V amendments convention.
I have been an enthusiastic supporter of ASL. I have to acknowledge, however, that missteps have impeded its progress.
Fortunately, there is a very plush silver lining within the mistakes.
The latest missteps involved a set of rules proposed by the ASL executive committee. Some of these missteps involved procedure: Apparently there was insufficient consultation with professional drafters or with members of the ASL standing rules committee.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the product was marred by substantive deficiencies. Some of these were glaringly obvious to everyone except the drafters—specifically, a system of super-majority, weighted voting, and co-officer rules reminiscent of the political theories of John C. Calhoun. These devices directly violated the balance struck by the Constitution in Article V. They also would have rendered the convention unworkable by granting a veto at every stage to a minority unsympathetic with the convention’s goal.
The principal argument for this approach was that for an amendment to have a chance at ratification it had to enjoy super-majority support at the convention. But as I pointed out in two articles covering the subject (here and here), this argument is simply unsupported by actual convention experience.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
publius, jacquerie
ping
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The power hungry left just can’t avoid the temptation of unjust power.
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An update from Dr. Natelson and some history.
Maybe my skull is just too thick?
What is wrong with one state = one vote?
Am I missing something here?
It is a convention of States,
not a convention of legislative districts.
It appears the convention is being over-lawyered before it starts.
Oh, my. It sounds like Democrat Party Nominating Convention rules. Let the Delegates vote, and then the over-weighted super delegates get to decide what they REALLY want.
What's wrong with a simple one-state-one-vote rule, besides that the elites can't take it over?
-PJ
What's with this obsession with minority voting rights? This isn't a Senate that they're creating.
Given that 34 states had to agree to even call the Convention, why not start with the assumption that the majority already want similar things, instead of giving their detractors the weapons from the outset to block them? Let them use debate and the power of persuasion to change things.
-PJ
?
That’s how the House of Representatives is directed to vote for President in the event that no one gets an Electoral College majority.
This is the classic dispute that they had at the Constitutional Convention. Should each state have equal representation or should they be represented according to population? Out of that dispute emerged a bicameral Congress, one house set up to represent states equally and the other set up to represent them by population.
A really effective way to kill it.
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