I don’t share your optimism that the Article V process will be performed in the best interest of the States nor We The People. It will be compromised.
I cite the zeitgeist for my opinion.
You will have a chance to see it locally. The first will concern a balanced budget.
When it is received and certified by the National Archives, it will be sent out to the states for ratification.
So it will be coming to you locally. The discussion will be all around you. People that never engage publicly in politics will suddenly be immersed in it. It will shake things up.
It takes 13 states to stop ratification. Michigan won’t be one of them. But of course, you are going to see a year’s worth of local pandemonium in your area and around your state, as you’ve never seen before.
If you study Trump, you know he believes strongly in shaking things up. He’s on record as being for this process. He believes people need a good shaking up.
It’s going to be interesting to see how people respond to the proposition that in times of peace, the federal government should balance its books. It will interesting to see how the left spins against it.
I don’t share your optimism that the Article V process will be performed in the best interest of the States nor We The People.
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So the state legislatures, which are closest to the people cannot be trusted to amend the Constitution. But Senators, who are elected and controlled by large political entities (some foreign) can be trusted.
At one point in time (prior to the seventeenth amendment) there was a check on the Federal Government by state legislatures, simply because the Senators were directly appointed by the peoples’ representatives in their respective state legislatures.
The Constitution established the Convention of States, specifically to go around an embedded power structure (Legislative or Judicial), in order to restore citizens control of the national government.
To argue that the state legislatures cannot be trusted, is the same as saying the delegates to the original Constitutional Convention could not be trusted. The delegates to each, Constitutional Convention and Convention of States are one in the same. Bot groups of delegates were elected by state level legislatures.