Lessons from Recent State Constitutional Conventions

Over the past 45 years, 15 American states have held constitutional conventions to confront the pressing concerns of the day. These conventions pursued markedly different paths toward constitutional reform, and achieved widely varying degrees of success. The experience of these states provides important insights for policymakers and citizens that can help identify both models worthy of emulation and the potential pitfalls of reform. The likely success of state constitutional conventions appears tied not to the identity of delegates or the selection mechanism used to recruit them but rather to the scope of the possible revisions and the way in which amendments are presented to voters for final approval. In addition, recent political history suggests that voters remain reluctant to empanel conventions to pursue wholesale reform, rejecting every call for a constitutional convention that has appeared on a state ballot since 1990.