Campaign Constitution began with a business plan to change the Constitution through the States and not through Congress. Article V of the Constitution permits two thirds of the States to convene a Constitutional Convention and to thereafter submit the proposed amendments to the States for ratification either by state constitutional conventions or by their legislatures as determined by Congress.
I began this effort in 1982 and wrote a business plan at that time. I found no interest which may well be the case today. However, I became weary of various emails suggesting changes to the Constitution but with no plan or organized effort to achieve them. I decided to try again. This is a bipartisan effort. Political views are to be shunted aside in favor of the expenditure of common energy to improve our system by correcting imbalances which have developed but were never anticipated by the Founding Fathers who could not have foreseen the America we live in today.
The alarmists oppose the convention method because of the fear that a Constitutional Convention would open up their sacred document and result in changes to the Bill of Rights, the balance of powers or other important features of our republican form of government. Yet, they have a point. In order to overcome this risk, we have decided that the constitutional resolution to be presented to the Constitutional Convention should be determined in advance, approved in advance by the States and that the Constitutional Convention should be limited to that resolution. This would prevent the Constitutional Convention from considering all of the matters which give rise to the fears just described. In other words, it would limit the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Convention by agreement of the States to specified items.
I also knew that none of the changes to the Constitution which I thought were appropriate would necessarily be agreed to by others. Many would weigh in on the changes - the way they were worded, their necessity, the purpose of the changes and so forth. To deal with this and to determine whether the changes could take place at all, the business plan proposes developing organizations with bipartisan representation in each of the States and to bring those organizations together in one place to hash out the Constitutional Convention Resolution before taking it back to the States to seek the two thirds vote requirement necessary to have an official and formal Constitutional Convention. In this fashion, States, informally working together, become the first layer of consensus.
After the informal gathering of state organizations and agreement on a Constitutional Convention Resolution, the resolution would be submitted to each of the State legislatures for approval for the purpose of obtaining a two thirds vote which would require Congress to convene the Constitutional Convention. Once the Constitutional Convention is convened, delegates would be chosen as required by the laws of the various States whose jurisdiction would be limited as specified in the Constitutional Convention Resolution and there would be an opportunity to decide then what, if anything, was required to reform our Constitution. The Constitutional Convention Resolution reported by the Constitutional Convention would then be submitted to either the State legislatures for ratification or to conventions of each State for ratification as determined by Congress.
This website sets forth a summary of the 44 proposed amendments I have suggested. For each proposed amendment there is a commentary repeating the language proposed for the Constitution and containing comments relevant to the proposed amendment.
Following the commentaries are twelve essays relevant to concerns facing all Americans for whatever benefit they might have to those interested in joining this most important cause.
The website is also intended to reinforce the transparency and integrity of our organization. In addition to a posting of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as it would read if the changes proposed were adopted, there is a proposed Constitutional Convention Resolution, our governing documents, a place to report our revenues and expenses and biographical statement of who I am in case that makes a difference.
If you believe the Constitution needs any changes, then I hope you will support our mission with time, talent and financial support. We may not receive all the changes each of us would like but, if we can achieve some of them, we will rekindle interest in the Constitution and the freedoms it was designed to protect.
