Getting It Ratified

The constitutional requirement

Article V provides two routes. We are taking the first one.

The congressional route. A joint resolution passes the House and the Senate, each by two-thirds. It does not go to the President. Then three-fourths of the states — thirty-eight of fifty — must ratify it through their legislatures.

The convention route. Two-thirds of state legislatures can call a convention. We are not taking this route, and the reason matters: a convention's scope may not be limitable once it is called. That risk is why the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, and most of the mainstream reform community oppose it. We would rather take the slower road with those organizations than the faster road without them.

The plan, in order

1. Legal reviewThis text was written by a citizen. Before it goes in front of any legislature it gets read by a constitutional attorney, and what they say gets published alongside it — including the parts they think are wrong.
2. Local resolutionsCity councils and county boards pass resolutions calling on Congress to act. This is where amendments are actually built. The organization Move to Amend has passed roughly seven hundred local resolutions and initiatives across eight states on a related amendment. Seaside, California is the first city we are asking.
3. State legislaturesLocal resolutions accumulate into state resolutions. A state legislature that has heard from thirty of its own cities is a different audience than one that has heard from none.
4. Congressional sponsorsMembers of Congress sponsor amendments that already have a constituency. The resolutions are what create the constituency. This step comes fourth, not first, and everyone who skips to it fails.
5. Two-thirds of both housesThe hardest single step. It takes a coalition wide enough that neither party can own it or kill it — which is the reason this text deliberately does not touch abortion, guns, or any other question that sorts Americans into two boxes.
6. Thirty-eight statesRatification. The 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age, went from proposal to ratified in one hundred days. The 27th took two hundred and two years. Both are possible outcomes.

The one thing you can do this week

Send a letter. To your city council member, your county supervisor, your state legislator, or your member of Congress. A letter from a constituent with a name and an address is the unit of currency in this entire process, and almost nobody sends one.

If you do not know who represents you, your city's website lists the council. For Congress, house.gov will tell you.

Use this if it helps. Change it so it sounds like you — a letter in your own words counts for more than a form letter, and staff can tell the difference instantly.

Mailed paper outperforms email by a wide margin at the local level. At the federal level, a phone call to the district office outperforms both.

If you hold office, or want to

What we ask is narrow and it is one question: do you support this amendment, yes or no?

You are not being asked to refuse contributions your opponent will accept. You are not being asked to run an honest campaign against a bought one. That would be asking you to lose, and nobody should have to go first.

You are being asked to support changing the rules for everyone at the same time. That is a coordination problem, not a courage problem, and coordination problems have solutions.

Those who answer yes are asked to hold to a second standard in how they serve: Honesty, Transparency, Integrity, Accountability. We call it the Philotimo Pledge, after a Greek word that means the thing that makes a person do right when nobody is watching.

If you organize, teach, or run a business

Bring it to your city council. Most councils have a public comment period any resident may use. A resolution needs a sponsor on the council and a resident willing to keep showing up. Write to us and we will send what we have — the model resolution language, the one-page summary, and what we learned in Seaside.

Put it in front of your members. Chambers of commerce, service clubs, unions, congregations, and classrooms are where an amendment either becomes real or stays a website.

Tell us where it is wrong. This text has been revised many times and will be revised again. Criticism from someone who has read it carefully is worth more to us than agreement from someone who has not.