A Case for Revising State Constitutional Conventions
Guest post by J.H. Snider
Expand Democracy’s Introduction: J.H. Snider is the author of Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America's Founding (Routledge, 2026). The following arguments and recommendations are the authors’ own.
ISBN 9781041022596, 528 Pages, 18 B/W Illustrations, May 6, 2026, by Routledge
Author’s Introduction: On May 6, Routledge published my book, Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America’s Founding. This piece is adapted from my Substack post that was based on my four-party series in The Election Law Blog’s Book Corner that introduces the Periodic Constitutional Convention Referendum (PCCR) and outlines its history, contemporary politics, and need for reform, including a recommendation to use open primaries and ranked choice voting to elect convention delegates. Seven PCCRs will be on the ballot by 2030: Michigan (2026), Connecticut (2028), Hawaii (2028), Illinois (2028), Iowa (2030), Maryland (2030), and Montana (2030).
Until the early 20th Century, the primary mechanism to address systemic democratic dysfunction at the U.S. state level was the state constitutional convention. The “Periodic State Constitutional Convention (PCCR), a variant of this institution, was invented to enable the people to initiate a convention independently of the state legislature. PCCRs have resulted in state changes like legislative reapportionment, the creation of the ballot initiative, and enhanced home rule. But like much else in modern democracy, the PCCR process needs repair; no state has held a PCCR in more than 40 years.
That’s true even though 14 U.S. state constitutions, representing 88 million Americans (approximately one-fourth of the population), include the PCCR as a mechanism for initiating constitutional change. The PCCR includes three public votes that bypass a state’s legislature: (1) whether to call a constitutional convention; (2) if called, who to vote for as convention delegates; and (3) whether to ratify the amendments proposed by the delegates.
Each of the three public votes that bypass the legislature has a distinct democratic function. The first vote initiates constitutional change. The second elects delegates who then propose one or more constitutional changes. And the third vote ratifies those proposed changes. The constitutional convention, as it was invented in Massachusetts in the late 1770s, includes the second and third public votes, but not the first.
The role of the people in constitutional change is widely accepted. All 50 U.S. states require constituent ratification power: the people must approve any constitutional changes proposed by a legislature or constitutional convention. All 50 states also provide constituent proposal power, allowing a legislature to initiate a constitutional convention. However, only some states provide constituent initiation power, allowing the people to initiate constitutional change through either the PCCR or a constitutional initiative.
Agenda-setting power, especially initiation power, is more causally remote to constitution-making than the power to ratify, which helps explain why it is so often overlooked among constitution-making mechanisms. But that does not make it unimportant. It is the power to initiate constitutional change independently of a legislature that the PCCR in the late 18th century introduced into the U.S. state system of constitutional change mechanisms. Such constitutional conventions need not involve revising an entire constitution. New Hampshire, the state with the most conventions —ten alone during the 20th Century – have only proposed amendments to its original Constitution.
The PCCR’s automatic placement of a constitutional convention call referendum on the ballot at a fixed interval takes the choice of whether to place the referendum on the ballot out of the legislature’s hands and grants it to the people, thus creating constituent initiation power. The periods between referendums to call a convention range from 10 to 20 years, with 20 years for eight states, 10 years for five states, and 16 years for one state. During the next four years, seven PCCRs will be on the ballot in Michigan (2026), Connecticut (2028), Hawaii (2028), Illinois (2028), Iowa (2030), Maryland (2030), and Montana (2030).
The constitutional initiative, the other major mechanism for implementing constituent initiation power, is specified in 18 state constitutions. In total, 24 states, covering 145 million people (about 65% more than for the PCCR), provide for some type of ballot initiative. Compared to the ballot initiative, the PCCR offers more opportunities for publicly financed democratic deliberation at the constituent agenda-setting stages of constitution-making. This is another way of saying that once a convention is launched, the proposal power of well-organized and well-financed interest groups is much diminished compared with that of the ballot initiative, since any delegate can propose a reform simply by raising her hand.
No scholarly consensus exists on how many state constitutional conventions America has held over the last 250 years, partly because there is disagreement over how to define a convention. The most widely used numbers in the literature range from 233 to 256 state conventions—an average of about five per state. But contemporary state legislatures disparage the constitutional convention process. They are fiercely opposed to calling conventions because such conventions reduce their gatekeeping power over constitutional change.
An important exception to this opposition is statehood and territorial conventions, such as the one currently meeting in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which transfer control over fundamental law from the U.S. Congress to a U.S. subnational legislature. Traditionally, Congress has mandated that a subnational unit seeking its own constitution must convene a convention. This explains why, in 2020, USVI’s legislature approved placing a convention call referendum on the ballot and, in 2024, held an election for convention delegates. In 2027, USVI citizens will vote on whether to approve the resulting convention’s constitution, thus potentially shifting control of USVI’s organic law from Congress to USVI’s legislature.
PCCR’s Contemporary Politics
To understand the PCCR’s contemporary dismal politics, one must first understand the incentives of its various political actors. Here, it is undesirable to rely on the various actors’ self-descriptions because seeking power is generally not a socially acceptable motivation. Instead, one must rely on rational choice theory, supplemented by studies of actual behavior. The two most important players are the legislature and interest groups.
The Legislature. Legislatures are natural enemies of the PCCR and of the state constitutional convention process more generally because legislatures want to preserve their gatekeeping power over constitutional change. Exceptions to this rule include cases in which external forces pressure subnational governments to call a convention. These include statehood conventions and the aftermath of the Civil War in the late 1860s, when Congress required Southern states to revise their constitutions through independently elected conventions as a condition to rejoin the Union.
Apex Interest Groups. Apex interest groups are defined as those that excel at influencing legislatures and are thus also natural enemies of the constitutional convention process. Such groups may be associated with the left or right and include labor and business groups. The specific reasons for their enmity include: First, their investments in legislative relationships are devalued if a convention is called. Second, conventions cannot pass unpopular legislation at the last minute and without public scrutiny; conventions can only propose laws, which must then be publicized and ratified by a majority of the people. Third, unlike legislators, they have minimal means to punish wayward delegates because delegates are not up for re-election; convention accountability largely comes from the ratification vote that follows the convention’s proposals. Fourth, partly because delegates, unlike legislators, do not stand for re-election, and their actions are likely to be scrutinized more carefully by future courts and historians, they tend to be more focused on creating a positive legacy.
A consequence of these political incentives is that political and interest-group elites on both the left and the right are overwhelmingly opposed to calling a state constitutional convention. And since the most educated members of the public take their political cues from these elites, they, too, are opposed to calling a convention, often developing an instinctive repugnance toward anyone calling for one.
My book focuses on three case studies to illustrate three aspects of the PCCR’s dismal contemporary politics: 1) institutional foundations (Maryland), 2) campaign finance (Alaska), and 3) messaging (Rhode Island).
Recommendations
The U.S. Declaration of Independence is widely viewed as encapsulating the principles that define what it means to be an American. As part of this year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration, more attention should be given to a clause in the Declaration that has been routinely ignored. The clause states that the people have an unalienable right to alter their form of government (i.e., their constitution). That is, the people have a right to constituent power. Consequently, a constitution that does not grant the people meaningful constituent power lacks legitimacy as a democratic constitution. Most state constitutions have a similar clause, and our founding generations fought hard to include them. Constituent power is the most fundamental of all political rights—more fundamental even than the generic right to vote—because a constitution is the source of the other fundamental rights.
In 1789, James Madison proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the first amendment in the package that later became the Bill of Rights) that included language on constituent power like that in the Declaration above. A version of it passed the House Select Committee but was defeated in the Senate. Madison’s proposed amendment should be reintroduced. However, instead of its vague language about the scope of constituent power, the text should state that constituent power encompasses not only ratification but also agenda-setting power independent of constituted powers. A primary goal of this amendment would be civic education, as it requires reading and discussing the Constitution.
Given the hostility of legislatures and America’s most powerful interest groups to calling a genuine constitutional convention, the PCCR may be the last politically viable means in America for an existing state to call a reasonably genuine convention. But reforms are needed, as discussed in detail in my book - - from reforms in how convention delegates are to be elected to providing roles for citizen assemblies like arbitrating any disputes between a legislature and a constitutional convention to monitoring and commenting on convention debates.
The public should be taught that meaningful constituent power is essential to the long-term preservation of constitutional democracy and democracy more generally. To the extent that this is so, America’s civic institutions, including K-12 schools, colleges, museums, and public celebrations such as America’s 250th anniversary, should receive failing grades - as I will address in my next book.