Would an Article V Convention “runaway” from its purpose?

Idaho lawmakers are currently considering HCR 25. According to the Statement of Purpose: 

“This Concurrent Resolution recognizes the growing national debt as a legitimate threat to the United States of America and serves as an application by the State of Idaho to call a ‘Convention for proposing Amendments’ under Article V of the United States Constitution, strictly limited to proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the States for Ratification.”

Critics claim that this could lead to a “runaway convention” that will meddle with the entire constitution. But there is a high threshold of a 3/4 vote, or 38 states needed, in order to ratify an amendment to the Constitution to ensure order and stability. It is hard to get 38 states to agree to anything, let alone radical constitutional changes.

Rob Natelson, a former University of Montana constitutional law professor, is a Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Mountain States Policy Center. He has studied this issue extensively. Rob authored the book “The Original Constitution,” and Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have cited his constitutional research repeatedly.

Writing for the Article V Information Center, Rob wrote a study in 2021 called “Answering the ‘Runaway Scenario’: Constitutional Whack-a-Mole.” That study concluded:

“The Founders inserted the convention procedure for state legislatures to use—particularly in times of federal overreaching. If James Madison and John Dickinson were to come among us today, and we were to tell them of our current predicament, what would they say? No doubt, they would ask if we had resorted to the state-driven process in Article V to correct the problem. And when we admitted that we had not—that we had allowed ourselves to be gulled by alarmists and quacks—what would these Founders say then? They would tell us that the whole mess was our own fault. And they would be right.”

It is clear that the political incentives do not exist for Congress to implement the fiscal discipline needed to get the country’s fiscal health back on the right track. The Article V option exists just for times like this. The Founders of the Constitution would not have provided the Article V option to the states if they were concerned that a “runaway convention” would undo all their hard work.

This is why constitutional amendments need approval of at least 38 states to be ratified. A high threshold to keep delegates focused on their charge.