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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (160248)	4/8/2005 5:44:01 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Which is why I said one might argue over semantics. I suppose it could be considered semantics, but its a major difference in meaning not a minor semantic quibble. I'm sure you are also aware of the Convention method, and the fact that the States can initiate the proceedings aside from Congress. Yes but you still don't have a direct vote of the people. 2/3rds of the state legislatures have to call for the convention. And then the vote might go back to the state legislatures. I don't actually know the exact procedure if congress does decide to have state conventions ratify the amendments but I don't think it is decided by a plebiscite. And of course the method has never been used. "The other way of amending the Constitution has never been successfully used. Under this procedure, the states initiate the amending process by petitioning Congress for a constitutional convention. When two-thirds of the states have submitted petitions, Congress must call a convention. Any amendments approved by such a convention must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Congress decides whether state legislatures or state conventions will ratify these amendments." lessonplanspage.com A couple of interesting paragraphs later in that article - "Many people have voiced concern over the convention method of amending the Constitution. Our only experience with a national constitutional convention took place 200 years ago. At that time the delegates took it upon themselves to ignore the reason for calling the convention, which was merely to improve the Articles of Confederation. The Founding Fathers also violated the procedure for changing the Articles of Confederation. Instead of requiring approval of all the state legislatures, the signers of the Constitution called for ratification by elected state conventions in only nine of the 13 states. Another point of anxiety is that Article V of the Constitution says nothing about what a convention may or may not do. If a convention is held, must it deal with only one proposed amendment? Or could the delegates vote on any number of amendments that were introduced? The Constitution itself provides no answers to these questions." BTW - I am not a supporter of the "Safe America Amendment" mentioned later in the article (and in fact have never heard of it before seeing that article). I was just searching for some information about constitutional conventions. Of course, one could well argue that our Presidential selection is not directly democratic either, given the quirks of the Electoral College and the apportionment of Electors amongst the states, but it is an approximation. The most relevant distinction is not the electoral college and the apportionment among the states but the fact that we elect representatives rather directly voting on issues. Getting back to what originally started this conversation (and back to Foreign Affairs) Iraq also has a system where they vote for representatives rather then having plebiscites on issues. Tim