I agree with you. In any event, those who make the call will find it's so.
Hmm, the Archivist of the United States collects state electoral college votes. I wonder if this is the office that keeps track of state convention applications.
The source said twelve states rescinded their balanced budget applications, and wondered if that was legal. I don't see why not.
In any event, there appears to be a building groundswell of disgust with, and resistance to, oppression.
I agree with you. In any event, those who make the call will find it's so.
Dr. Natelson at ALEC believes that petitions, like ratifications, are forever. In this, he follows the logic of how the 27th Amendment was ratified 203 years after Madison got it through Congress by the necessary two-thirds votes. Ratification is a federal duty that can be accomplished only once, and the federal courts have agreed. There was a chance to reconsider this when the Equal Rights Amendment crashed and burned in 1982, but by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, it was moot, in that both the seven year and (questionable) ten year ratification windows had expired.
The ABA views it differently, believing that ratifications are apples and Amendment Convention petitions are oranges. According to the ABA, states can rescind petitions for a convention, and more importantly, petitions can be held to a standard of contemporaneousness by Congress under both the Dillon and Coleman decisions from the Supreme Court. The ABA recommended in 1973 that Congress finally write the Single Subject Standard and the Contemporaneousness Standard into law, but Congress has refused to do so because it would give litigants, i.e., the states, the ability to get a reading from the federal courts that might not be to Congress’ advantage.
There is another complicating factor. After Congress was blind-sided by the 27th Amendment, a new law was enacted in 1992 reforming the amendatory process. One source at FR said that the law was so poorly written that it would make further use of the amendatory process difficult. For one thing, I believe that law took the Archivist of the United States out of the loop. As a result, I don’t know who is responsible for tabulating Amendment Convention petitions, but it is probably somebody in Congress. There is also the question as to whether that law discharged all petitions for an Amendments Convention generated between 1789 and 1992, and whether that was even legal.
How many of those 34 petitions for an Amendments Convention to address a balanced budget amendment are valid?
Some petitions were rescinded. Some were rescinded, but re-petitioned by a later legislature. Some have been out there since the Eighties. This whole issue would first have to be untangled by the person whom Congress has authorized to tabulate the petitions to see just how many petitions are truly out there. Congress could then decide validity as to whether petitions are forever, whether petitions are contemporaneous, whether petitions were legally discharged by Congress in 1992, and whether recission is legally permissible. That would get litigated by the states in federal court. This is an open issue.
Do any petitions have a Discharge Clause where the state says the petition is moot if Congress sends its own Balanced Budget Amendment to the states for ratification?
In 1913, this is how the 17th Amendment was enacted. Enough petitions for an Amendments Convention to consider direct election of senators contained a Discharge Clause so that Congress could rule them moot, thus bringing the number of petitions below the two-thirds window, thus permitting Congress not to call an Amendments Convention to consider the topic.
Is the language within the petitions sufficiently identical to indicate common intent?
This is why the ABA suggests that when a state submits a petition for an Amendments Convention, it lists all the states that have previously submitted similar petitions. This is to protect the states by requiring Congress to tabulate all such petitions in the same column and not use specious excuses about wording to tabulate petitions in different columns.
If there are 34 valid petitions, will Congress do its duty?
I have posted in previous threads about the Powell decision, the willingness of the Supreme Court to order Congress about, the willingness of the Court to order a convention on its own authority, and whether the Court would consider this a “political question” to be decided in future elections for Congress.
Will Congress try to pass rules to determine how the states select delegates and how the Convention does business?
In previous threads, I’ve noted how the ALEC and ABA documents differ drastically on this. ALEC says that an Amendments Convention is the property of the states, and Congress has no authority whatsoever. ABA says that the Dillon and Coleman precedents give Congress wide latitude in regulating the amendatory process, provided such regulation does not contravene the plain language of Article V. Would there be enough votes in Congress to set down the rules for a convention and would that bill be signed into law? Would it survive a challenge in the federal courts? This is an open issue.
If Congress makes a hash of things, could the states ignore Congress and hold their own convention?
The answer to that is No. An Amendments Convention not called by Congress under the rubrics of Article V – an “outlaw convention” – would not be valid, and Congress would be free to ignore the products of such a convention. Congress would be free to ignore ratifications of any amendments generated by an outlaw convention. The procedures contained within Article V must be followed to the letter. As to just how much authority Congress possesses to regulate the amendatory process would certainly end up at the Supreme Court.
If we can get a convention to consider a balanced budget amendment, we could get all these gray areas defined and set in precedent once and for all so that when an Amendments Convention for Mark Levin’s topics, a convention with a much larger purview, gets the requisite number of petitions, we would already know what the procedures are. The successful conclusion of a smaller convention would reassure people that the Amendments Convention process is safe and cannot get out of control. That puts Congress and the political parties on notice that the people have found a way to bypass them.