Mind you, I am not arguing that the 17th Amendment was a good idea. It turns out it was a very bad idea. I am merely pointing out how the process works, when the states choose to force an idea down the throat of a reluctant Congress.
Congressman Billybob
...some of the states issued "conditional calls."
Some states ratified the Constitution on the condition that some kind of bill of rights be ratified later. Madison was later to state that the concept of conditional ratification was nonsensical.
This brings in Coleman v. Miller.
...some of the calls were withdrawn, in their own terms.
Coleman stated that a federal duty, as in the act of ratification, could be executed only once. This was confirmed in the Court's decision in the Eighties in the case of those states that attempted to rescind their ratifications of the Equal Rights Amendment.
I would think that a petition for a Convention for Proposing Amendments would be a federal duty like the act of ratification. Thus, it may be accomplished only once, cannot be rescinded, and no conditions may be attached to it.
If that is the case, then those convention calls were still valid, even after Congress sent the 17th Amendment to the states. Granted, the 1992 law discharged those petitions and nullified them, rendering the whole issue moot. But I'm having problems seeing where the act of ratification and the act of petitioning for a convention are different, and where one would be covered by Coleman and where the other would not.