Quote:
Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA
Term limits aren't in the best interest of an existing Congress,so that ain't getting through them. And I believe that enough people (though probably just barely enough) understand the critical nature of the EC to have that be an eventual fizzle.
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Missing the point, Jon. There are two paths to Constitutional amendments, and only one requires Congress to assent.
If 34 states submit a petition to Congress for a Constitutional convention on the subject of term limits, Congress is required to convene one. And beyond that, we don't know what would happen. We don't know how delegates would be selected, how many each state would get, how long they would have to conduct their business, how limited the scope of their tinkering would be, how many state delegations would have to assent in order to send the amendments in question to state legislatures for ratification, etc.
The Founders didn't specify those things in Article V. Congress has no clear Constitutional authority to limit the work of such a convention, nor any Constitutional justification to refuse to call such a convention, if the requisite 34 states request one.
Because of that - and especially the bit about limiting the scope of their tinkering - there's no guarantee that any particular amendment proposal would fizzle at the convention. I can see a fair bit of "you vote for mine and I'll vote for yours" horse trading resulting in a plethora of amendments being sent to the states for ratification.
Yes, 3/4 of the state legislatures (or state conventions, if Congress were to choose conventions over legislatures for approval, but that's only happened once) would still have to ratify, and that's a high bar to clear. But all politics being local, if the voters demand Congressional term limits loudly enough, it's unlikely that state legislatures would refuse to ratify.
As for the Electoral College, how many states between the coasts do you think resent the electoral power of New York, Texas, and California? Do you think you could find 38 state legislatures which might go "hmm, if the Electoral College goes bye-bye, Presidential candidates will have to pay more attention to my state during the general election"?