Constitutional convention is a bad idea for Ohio, US

There’s a movement afoot – and some Ohio legislators are blindly signing on – to get two-thirds of the states to support a convention that would amend the U.S. Constitution.

It is a misguided effort that has the potential to corrupt the Constitution, splinter an already divided nation and give smaller, less-populous states disproportionate political influence over larger states, including Ohio.

Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, if two-thirds of state legislatures adopt resolutions in support of a constitutional convention, Congress must call one. Whatever amendments the delegates to the convention adopted, would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. That would be 38 of the 50 states.

The move in Ohio involves joint House and Senate resolutions. One of the backers, Rep. Christina Hagan, R-Alliance, explains her support for a constitutional convention: “Federal laws now impede upon nearly every aspect of our lives.” Those intrusions, she says, include, but are not limited to, “what kind of light bulbs we can buy, farming practices, school curriculum, school lunches and most recently and egregiously our individual freedoms and rights to choose our own health care and insurance policies.”

Some supporters of a constitutional convention have more narrow objectives, such as enacting a balanced- budget amendment or congressional term limits.

But it’s easy to imagine a runaway convention that addressed a broader agenda, something along the lines of, but not limited to, Hagan’s wish list.

The enthusiasm for a constitutional convention is being driven by the resurgence of the Republican Party, which, following the November election, gained control of 33 state legislatures, one short of the two-thirds threshold.

Ohio is one of those 33, but it would be a grave error for the General Assembly to jump on the convention bandwagon.

Republican resurgence

For one thing, amending the Constitution should not be a partisan affair. For another, while Ohio is part of the relatively recent Republican resurgence, it has little in common with many of the other 32 states. Ohio is the seventh most populous state in the nation and its legislators should be more concerned with protecting its interests than in calling a convention that could be taken over by smaller, more numerous states that have their own agendas.

This is not the same nation that convened a constitutional convention 230 years ago.

The early states were far more equal than they are today. The 16 states enumerated in the 1790 census ranged from Delaware, with a population of 59,094, to Pennsylvania, with a population of 434,373. The largest state had seven times the population of the smallest.

In 2010, the population of the 50 states ranged from 563,626 in Wyoming to 33,871,956 in California. The largest state now has 60 times the population of the smallest.

The Senate was constituted by the founders as a guard against tyranny of the minority by the majority. But as the gap between less populated states and more populated states has grown, the minority now has the potential to dominate the majority.

Anyone who thinks it’s a good thing that as few as 35 percent of the nation’s population can control the U.S. Senate, might approve when sparsely populated rural states start rewriting the Constitution. Ohioans should be wary of where a constitutional convention could lead.

The convention enthusiasts of today envision changing the nation forever, and well they might. But not in the way they imagine. The politics of the United States has seen shifts between Republicans and Democrats, between interventionism and isolationism from decade to decade and century to century.

Once the Pandora’s Box of a constitutional convention is opened, it remains open. And whatever changes would be made by a convention today are subject to reversal 20 or 30 or 40 years from now, if the political winds shift.

The first constitutional convention was contentious, but 39 of the 55 delegates attending managed to reach the compromises necessary for adoption. Would that even be possible today, in a nation divided by partisanship and roiled by a 24-7 news cycle?

The United States today is in need of more unity, and a constitutional convention would divide, not unify, the nation’s states and people.