The amendments

We don't insist on this exact list. We support any amendment that limits federal power, distributes it back to states and citizens, or makes government harder to capture. The proposals below are a starting point. The movement is bigger than any single one of them.

A serious convention will refine, combine, and discard. That is the point. What follows is what we believe a serious convention should consider.

Restore representation

• Uncap the House. The House has been frozen at 435 seats since 1929, even as the population has tripled. Each member now represents over 760,000 people, the worst ratio in the developed world. Uncapping restores proximity between citizens and their representatives.
  See: Thirty-Thousand.org, New America's political reform program.
• Replace winner-take-all elections. First-past-the-post voting locks the country into two parties by mathematical necessity. Any serious alternative (ranked choice, approval, STAR, proportional) breaks the duopoly and lets consensus candidates win. We don't endorse a single method. We endorse abandoning FPTP.
  See: FairVote (ranked choice), Equal Vote Coalition (STAR), Center for Election Science (approval).
• Independent federal redistricting. Districts drawn by incumbents protect incumbents. Independent commissions have already passed by ballot initiative in California, Michigan, Arizona, and Colorado. Lock the principle in at the federal level.
  See: RepresentUs, Common Cause.

End executive overreach

• No foreign military involvement without a Congressional mandate. The War Powers Resolution exists and is routinely ignored. Make the constraint constitutional, not statutory, so it cannot be waived by the next crisis.
  See: Quincy Institute, Concerned Veterans for America.
• States control their National Guard. Federalization of state National Guard units should require the consent of the state's governor, not unilateral executive action.
• Ban involuntary conscription. No draft. No Selective Service registration as a precondition for federal benefits or licenses. A free people fight for their country by choice or not at all.
• Limit the presidential pardon. No self-pardons. No pardons for those who acted on the president's behalf. No pardons in the final months of a term. The pardon stays as a check on judicial overreach but stops being a tool for personal and political insulation.
• Sunset national emergencies. Over a hundred standing federal emergency authorities are currently active, some declared decades ago. Emergencies should expire on a fixed timeline unless re-authorized by Congress.
  See: Brennan Center for Justice.

Modernize and clarify rights

• Explicit digital privacy. The Fourth Amendment was written before the internet, before cell phones, before the bulk collection of metadata. An explicit right to privacy covering digital communications, location data, and personal records closes the gap that courts have spent decades lawyering around.
• Limits on civil asset forfeiture. Property should not be seized without a criminal conviction. The current regime lets the government take cash and cars from people who are never charged with a crime.
• Limits on warrantless surveillance. Mass collection of communications without individualized suspicion is the kind of general warrant the Fourth Amendment was written to forbid. Close the data broker loophole: what the government cannot compel without a warrant, it should not be allowed to buy from a commercial broker either. Restate the principle in modern terms.
  See, across these three: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Brennan Center, Cato Institute's Fourth Amendment work.
• End qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is a doctrine the Supreme Court invented in the 1960s and 70s. It shields government officials from accountability even when they violate constitutional rights, as long as those exact rights haven't been spelled out in a prior case. Rights that cannot be enforced are not really rights. Congress has refused to fix this for decades and the Court will not undo its own creation. Article V is the path that remains.
  See: Institute for Justice, Cato Institute, ACLU.

Limit fiscal capture

• Supermajority to raise federal taxes. Roughly sixteen state constitutions already require a supermajority to raise state taxes. The principle scales: if the federal government wants more of your money, it should clear a higher bar than 50 percent + 1.
  See: National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform.
• Require a balanced federal budget. Congress should not be able to mortgage the future of its citizens to fund the politics of the present. The balanced budget amendment movement has historically come within striking distance of an Article V convention on this point alone.
  See: the long-running Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force.

Restore federalism and accountability

• Repeal the 17th Amendment. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures to give the states a direct voice in the federal government. Direct election turned the Senate into a second House and severed the states from the federal balance. Returning senator selection to the states is one of the cleanest structural moves to restore federalism.
• Congress is bound by every law it passes. No carve-outs for members, their staff, or their security. If a law is too restrictive to apply to Congress, it is too restrictive to apply to anyone. This single principle would change the character of how laws get written.
• Major regulations require Congressional approval. Most federal lawmaking today happens inside executive-branch agencies with no direct accountability to voters. Major rules should not take effect without an up-or-down vote by the people's representatives.

Article V is already in motion

Multiple coalitions are already working state by state to reach the 34-state threshold, each focused on a different set of amendments. We don't need to sign onto any single platform. Every state any of them wins is a step closer to 34.

• Convention of States Project. The largest active effort. Nineteen-plus state applications passed on a platform of fiscal restraints, term limits, and limits on federal jurisdiction.
• Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force. The long-running balanced budget amendment effort came within a few states of forcing a convention in the 1980s and is still organizing.
• Wolf-PAC. Campaign finance amendment via Article V. Five state applications passed.

The path runs through state legislatures. Find yours. Pressure them to file.

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