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"It's the first time any of these applications have had this much movement in quite some time," Viki Harrison, director of Constitutional Convention and Protecting Dissent Programs at Common Cause, told Insider. She called the passage of four new convention calls in states including South Carolina "a brutal loss."  The prospect of a free-for-all convention has scared lawmakers away from other historic efforts to rewrite the nation's Constitution, fearing that a debate on imposing term limits or a balanced budget could quickly morph into a full-fledged redesigning of gun, abortion, religious, or free speech rights. "In states where you would have expected this to pass because they have Republican leadership, they're firmly on our side because they're scared about losing guns," Harrison said. 

Viki Harrison, director of state operations for Common Cause, said fringe groups from both sides of the aisle have called for a convention of states over the years, but her organization is opposed, noting the gathering could easily be influenced by powerful special interests. "Who's going to choose who goes to the convention?" Harrison wondered. "We already see how outside special-interest groups, big-money donors, have so much influence in elections, so why would we think this would be any different?" Supporters argued Article Five was written by the founding fathers as an option for states to respond should the federal government overstep its powers. Harrison countered they failed to create guardrails, leaving the Constitution open to unpredictable changes. "Anything that we hold dear, whether you care about education, or environmental rights or gun rights, no matter what you care about in the Constitution, if we called an Article V convention, it's up for grabs," Harrison cautioned.

“What we’re seeing is they’re kind of putting all these applications into one basket,” said Rebecca Timmons, a communications coordinator at Common Cause, which opposes the Article V convention. “There are no guardrails.”

“The First Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment,” said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, a liberal group that campaigns against the calling of a convention. “Any civil rights, any constitutional protection in the Constitution could be up for grabs in this constitutional convention.” Common Cause and other groups have, over the last few years, focused their efforts on persuading states with longstanding convention resolutions to rescind them, with some success. Colorado’s state legislature in April voted to rescind all of the previous convention resolutions its general assembly had passed in an effort to ensure the state did not play an unwitting role in the calling of a new convention. Still, that Walker and other conservatives may even be willing to try the legal route has aroused concern among convention opponents.  “They know their agenda is unpopular,” Riestenberg said. “So they have to find a different way to push their agenda without getting legislators or voters to care about it.” 

Though their regularly stated goal is to relentlessly petition their state legislatures to call for an Article V convention, the coronavirus crisis presents a unique opportunity for their movement, said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, who has monitored the group and its involvement with other right-wing groups focused on state legislatures. “The Convention of States is interested in showing any type of image or anything that shows that people don’t like their government. I mean, that is their end goal, to overthrow the federal government and rewrite the Constitution,” Riestenberg said. “So this is a perfect opportunity for them to show that.”

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, has sounded alarms on a possible convention and portrays the coast-to-coast emergence of resolutions on the issue "a game of Whack-a-Mole. This is the most dangerous idea in American politics that most people know nothing about," she said.