Column: A constitutional convention can check runaway government

Among the disappointments of the recently-ended session of the Hawaii Legislature was the demise of Senate Concurrent Resolution 131, a resolution that calls upon Congress to convene a national convention, in accordance with Article V of the U.S. Constitution, to reform campaign financing.

This resolution passed with a strong majority in the state Senate but did not get a public hearing in the House Judiciary Committee for the second year in a row. What is concerning is that this outcome appears to have been driven by widespread misinformation about the convention process provided for in Article V.

There is broad agreement that campaign finance reform is needed. Congressional inaction on issues that are of very widespread concern among the American people — issues such as climate change and access to affordable health care — calls into question the cherished idea that the U.S. government is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Research such as the 2014 “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” has shown that “majorities of the American public … have little influence over the policies our government adopts.” Thus, it is not surprising that, public confidence in Congress is low, and that a large majority of Americans believe that reform is needed in the way campaigns are financed. Almost all of the testimony at the Senate hearing on SCR 131 was sympathetic to the goal of campaign finance reform.

Opposition centered on the claim that calling for a convention to amend the Constitution is “too risky.” To call for a convention for any purpose, opponents argued, is to risk a “runaway convention,” a convention that ignores the mandate for which it was called and instead makes sweeping and undesirable changes to the Constitution. But that will not, cannot, happen. Our forefathers made sure it couldn’t.

They did not entrust a convention with the power to actually amend the Constitution, only to propose amendments. Just like amendments proposed by Congress, any amendments proposed by a convention become part of the Constitution only when they have been ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 states). This requirement is crystal clear in the Constitution. Nothing short of a ratified Constitutional amendment can change the ratification threshold, and that would itself require endorsement by three-fourths of the states. The ratification process ensures that no decision convention delegates take will have any effect unless their ideas enjoy a very broad consensus among the American people.

What is truly alarming today is not the prospect of a runaway convention, but the prospect that an increasingly runaway government will go unchecked because the American people are afraid to make use of the corrective mechanisms that the Constitution provides. We must have the courage to act on campaign finance reform — because Congress is unlikely to act on its own initiative to reign in the system that has brought its current members to power, and because that system is undermining the very principles on which our government is founded.

The consensus required to fix this problem is achievable because a broad cross-section of Americans want control of their government back. Let’s use the tools we have to make that happen.