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 reviewWe want to hear from constitutional lawyers. Please provide feedback before we hand this to legislators. We will publish salient remarks and make changes for what will help the cause.
2. Local resolutionsCity councils and county boards pass resolutions calling on Congress to act. This is where amendments are actually built, and it is the step citizens control directly. We are asking you to inform your government representatives that they need to get this passed, or you will not vote for them. Seaside, California is the first city we are asking.
3. State legislaturesWe are opening offices across our country to support business endorsements that call upon state politicians to take a pledge of ethics and support this amendment. Local 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. We are providing services to self-interested businesses to inspire them to share our ethics and amendment proposal, making it required for their support of local politicians.
5. Two-thirds of both housesIt takes a coalition wide enough that neither party can own it or kill it — which is why this text deliberately does not touch abortion, guns, or any other question that sorts Americans into two boxes. It gets easy when businesses and citizens simply make it clear to the politician: support it, or let someone else run for office. Keep it clear and vote accordingly. We obtain the supermajority needed by uniting around the ethical pillars of Honesty, Transparency, Integrity, and Accountability — introducing Philotimo. Those you would actually enjoy having over for dinner are a supermajority all over the world.
6. Thirty-eight statesRatification. The 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age, went from proposal to ratified in one hundred days — the fastest in our history. That was before the internet. We could do this faster if you help. Ask how to help and it will happen. We need thirty-eight states, and the samples we have tested show that we can get this done.

Why this has to be an amendment

The obvious question is why a state cannot simply pass a law. The answer is documented, recent, and final.

No state can restrict corporate political spending while Citizens United stands. Not Montana, not Hawaii, not California. The question is closed at the state level.

Montana tried. It had the strongest case in our country.

In 1912, Montana voters passed the Corrupt Practices Act by ballot initiative. It prohibited corporations from spending treasury funds to influence state elections. It was enacted by the people, in response to a specific history of copper money buying the state’s government, and it stood for ninety-eight years.

After Citizens United, a group of corporations sued to overturn it. In December 2011 the Montana Supreme Court upheld the law, finding that Montana’s political environment made it especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government. The court had a factual record of corruption in front of it.

On June 25, 2012, in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, the United States Supreme Court reversed. Summarily. Per curiam. Without hearing oral argument. The opinion was two sentences: Montana’s arguments were already rejected in Citizens United, or failed to meaningfully distinguish it. The United States Chamber of Commerce had filed a brief urging exactly that result.

Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, writing that Montana’s experience casts grave doubt on the assumption that independent expenditures do not corrupt.

What that settled

A century-old law, passed directly by voters, upheld by a state supreme court on a documented record of corruption, was erased in two sentences:

Two sentences, without argument, by the highest court in the land.

Some state measures do survive, and the pattern is consistent. Disclosure survives — Citizens United upheld disclosure requirements 8–1 while striking the spending ban 5–4. Public financing survives. Anything that adds information or adds resources can stand. Anything that restricts corporate spending cannot — leading to trillions of dollars being used to capture detailed data on all voters, to control human psychology, sociology and political science through media algorithms and marketing, to purchase the influence of leadership, and now, with the ever-increasing powers of AI, to do all of it faster.

Why local resolutions are different, and why they work

A city council resolution calling for a constitutional amendment is not a law. It regulates nobody and binds nobody. There is nothing for a court to strike down.

That is precisely why the resolution path is the one that functions. Hundreds of local government resolutions calling for amendments of this kind have passed across the country, and not one has been challenged, because there is no cause of action against a town saying what it wants.

Resolutions accumulate into state resolutions. State resolutions create the constituency that congressional sponsors respond to. That is the whole mechanism, and Montana is the proof that no shorter route exists.

The one thing you can do this week

Send a letter. Share the information. Nominate an ethical business owner to join. Write 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.

Please nominate who should take the ethics pledge of Philotimo — business owners and city council representatives. Keep us updated on your efforts, or ask for more ideas to help.

We are hiring.

If you hold office, or want to

What we ask is simple 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.