There is a statutory procedure that States and Congress have to follow to get a proposed amendment to the National Archives that in turn will record and send back out to the States for ratification.
Everything is through the National Archives, they are the scorekeepers, they monitor and record the process.
For the state pathway, the state legislature speaker and state senate leader must sign, certify, and authorize the release of a proposed amendment to be sent by certified or registered mail to the National Archives.
Yes, the amendments by states must all conform to same wording, language and so on. Good catch. That’s why legislatures have extra-legislative support organizations like Convention of States, Assembly of States to act as secretaries, administrators, facilitators, communicators.
There is no convention. There are proposed amendments passed around and there is a process of iteration where states edit, provide input, make objections, etc. Then there are scores or tallies on how many states agree to the current version of wording. When 34 states agree with the current version, then the state legislative leaders may sign off on it and send it certified to the National Archives in Washington D.C. Some states might signal they will sign it but want to hold off until 38 states agree in principle with the amendment.
The legislators know what they are doing, The only difference is they take this ‘legislation’ in the same path as regular state legislation and they have to circulate it to other states through a facilitator like Assembly of States to get language conformity. It’s not really so different from what they normally do, it just takes longer for a process that is slow to begin with.
But they are getting there, they are very close now to sending in the first proposed amendment.
Thanks for the information.