Article V Convention

If the 2024 session is to be a new leaf as Speaker Arch pleaded, then Sen. Halloran needs to honor his agreement. Any attempts to pass an Article V resolution should be shelved until 2027. Keeping promises and compromises for their full term would indeed be a “model” for other state legislatures.

Geoff Foster, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, said there are no rules in the Constitution for how to govern a convention and no guarantee, even the First Amendment, would be safe. "There's great risk and great potential harm to everything already enshrined in our Constitution if we do open up this Pandora's box," Foster cautioned. Foster pointed out a convention could potentially allow unelected delegates and special-interest groups to enshrine their agenda into a founding document.

The citizens’ lobby Common Cause calls the nationwide movement for a convention “the most serious threat to our democracy, flying almost completely under the radar.” What can you do? Sign Common Cause’s online petition opposing an Article V convention. Track how your legislator votes on these bad bills. Then vote against anybody who thinks this is a good idea.

“The delegates could write amendments that revoke any of our most cherished rights — like our right to peaceful protest, our freedom of religion, or our right to privacy,” the progressive watchdog group Common Cause warns. Hyperbole? Maybe. The point is we simply don’t know.

Virginia Kase Solomón will be the next president and CEO of Common Cause. Currently CEO of the League of Women Voters, she will start her new role in February and will be the first Hispanic person to lead the democratic watchdog. She succeeds Karen Hobert Flynn, who died this spring after three decades with the organization.

Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy have been at the forefront of sounding the alarm and I’ve hot-linked their names to their most recent articles about the work they’re doing to try to stop the billionaire machine devoted to rewriting our Constitution. Please check them out, get on their mailing lists, and spread the word. This is one of those things that Republicans on the Court could use to seemingly spring out of nowhere and bring down our democracy once and for all.