State Color Code*
PINK — Constitutions with the mandatory periodic constitutional convention referendum.
PURPLE — Constitutions with the explicit constitutional convention popular initiative.
GREEN — Constitutions with both of the above constitutional convention mechanisms.
* States that may be able to use the popular initiative to call a constitutional initiative can be found here.
Next Referendum
Last Delegate Election
Referendums From 2010
Rhode Island, November 5, 2024
Alaska, November 8, 2022
Missouri, November 8, 2022
New Hampshire, November 8, 2022
U.S. Virgin Islands, Nov. 3, 2020*
Iowa, November 3, 2020
U.S. Virgin Islands, November 3, 2020
Hawaii, November 6, 2018
New York, November 7, 2017
Rhode Island, November 4, 2014
Maryland, November 2, 2010
* Voters approved the convention call.
Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums:
Their Development Since America’s Founding
Op-Eds on Rhode Island’s Nov. 5, 2024 Referendum
Snider, J.H., The disinformation campaign against a R.I. constitutional convention, Boston Globe, Nov. 2, 2024.
Snider, J.H., RI voter handbook is biased against ballot Question 1, Providence Journal, Oct. 19, 2024.
Snider, J.H., Following the money on Question 1, Rhode Island Current, Oct. 17, 2024.
Snider, J.H., Stop using history to shoot down a constitutional convention, Rhode Island Current, Oct. 7, 2024.
Snider, J.H., Why the opposition’s weird fixation on easily fixable ConCon flaws?, Warwick Beacon, Oct. 3, 2024.
Snider, J.H., Constitutional convention’s benefits outweigh cost, Providence Journal, Sept. 7, 2024. The print edition version of this op-ed was published under the title RI’s flawed obsession with a constitutional convention’s cost.
Snider, J.H., Legislature does a disservice to RI’s constitutional convention process, Providence Journal, June 23, 2024. The print edition version of this op-ed was published under the title Legislature is Subverting State’s ConCon Process.
Snider, J.H., and Gary Sasse, It’s past time for RI to prep for Nov. 5 constitutional convention, Providence Journal, May 12, 2024. The print edition version of this op-ed was published under the title Give priority to prep for constitutional convention.
Op-Eds and Policy Briefs on U.S. Virgin Islands 2023 Constitutional Convention Enabling Act
Snider, J.H., Policy Brief: The Proper Scope of USVI’s Constitutional Convention, USVI Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, January 2, 2024.
Snider, J.H., Policy Brief: Fixing USVI’s Constitutional Convention Enabling Act, USVI Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, March 27, 2023, revised with addendum on January 1, 2024.
Snider, J.H., USVI’s End-run Against America’s State Constitutional Tradition, Constitutional Conversations (a publication of the Center for Constitutional Design based at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law), June 7, 2023.
Snider, J.H., Implementing the Constitutional Convention Voters Approved in 2020, The Virgin Islands Consortium, March 24, 2023.
Snider, J.H., Where a U.S. Territory Can’t Get Its Own Constitution: A Self-Serving Legislature Drives the Plot in a Story of Democratic Failure, Zocalo Public Square, March 2, 2023.
Op-Eds on Alaska’s Nov. 8, 2022 Referendum
- Snider, J.H., Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns, The Fulcrum, Jan. 30, 2023.
- Snider, J.H., Part III: The failed constitutional convention campaign finance marketplace, The Fulcrum, Jan. 23, 2023.
- Snider, J.H., Part II: Deterrence helps explain the spending spree, The Fulcrum, Jan. 16, 2023.
- Snider, J.H., Part I: Alaska’s constitutional convention spending spree, The Fulcrum, Jan. 9, 2023.
- Snider, J.H., Congrats to the anti-ConCon coalition: They’ve run a brilliant campaign, Juneau Empire, Nov. 1, 2022.
- Snider, J.H., The lieutenant governor’s sizable role in the constitutional convention, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Oct. 20, 2022. For a copy of the article in the format of a news clipping, click here.
- Snider, J.H., Why is a convention referendum on the ballot this fall?, Juneau Empire, Oct. 6, 2022.
- Snider, J.H., Apparent biases at work in creating pro-ConCon statement, Juneau Empire, June 8, 2022.
- Snider, J.H., Derailing Alaska’s Constitutional Convention Referendum, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Feb. 20, 2022. For a copy of the article in the format of a news clipping, click here.
- Snider, J.H., Preparing for Alaska’s constitutional convention referendum, Juneau Empire, Feb. 9, 2022.
Op-Eds on Missouri’s Nov. 8, 2022 Referendum
- Snider, J.H., Missourians have a new opportunity to demand a constitutional convention, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 4, 2022.
- Snider, J.H., Appellate judges should call a jury to pick state Senate’s redistricting map, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 24, 2022.
Op-Eds on New Hampshire’s Nov. 8, 2022 Referendum
- Snider, J.H., Why Vote for a Con-Con Nov. 8th? Top-Four Primary With Ranked-Choice Voting, New Hampshire Journal, Oct. 16, 2022.
- Snider, J.H., Why is ‘con con’ on the Nov. 8 ballot?, Concord Monitor, Oct. 16, 2022.
- Snider, J.H., Why is the constitutional convention question on the fall ballot?, New Hampshire Union Leader, May 6, 2022. Note that this is substantially the same op-ed as the one published below in the New Hampshire Journal.
- Snider, J.H., Why Is a Constitutional Convention Question on NH Ballot This Fall?, New Hampshire Journal, April 28, 2022.
Op-Ed on Iowa’s Nov. 3, 2020 Referendum
- Snider, J.H., It’s time to talk about a constitutional convention, The Globe Gazette, November 1, 2020.
- Snider, J.H., Iowa’s constitutional convention process, a triumph of democracy, could be improved, The Gazette, October 10, 2020.
- Snider, J.H., 3 things Iowans should consider about constitutional convention referendum, Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 21, 2020.
- Snider, J.H., Regular Iowans can change things by voting for a constitutional convention on Nov. 3, Des Moines Register, August 16, 2020.
Course, Symposium, and Essay
A Political Primer on the Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendum
Short course held at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Convention Center, Wednesday, August 31, 2016, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Produced by J.H. Snider. The first part of the course, which included TV documentaries and pro & con political ads, can be found here.
A symposium summarizing the short course was published by the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association. See Symposium: The Politics of State Constitutional Reform, Law and Courts Newsletter, Fall 2016. The symposium contributors were J.H. Snider, Sanford Levinson, John Dinan, and Carol Weissert.
Background reading, including references to major works in this literature, can be found at J. H. Snider, Does the World Really Belong to the Living? The Decline of the Constitutional Convention in New York and Other US States, 1776–2015, Journal of American Political Thought 6, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 256-293.
“If it be asked what the American Revolution distinctively contributed to the world’s stock of ideas, the answer might go something along these lines…. The problem throughout much of America and Europe, for half a century, was to ‘constitute’ new government…. America solved the problem by the device of the constitutional convention…. The constitutional convention in theory embodied the sovereignty of the people. The people chose it for a specific purpose, not to govern, but to set up institutions of government…. The constitution was written and comprised in a single document. The constitution and accompanying declaration, drafted by convention, must, in the developed theory, be ratified by the people. The convention thereupon disbanded and disappeared, lest its members have a vested interest in the offices they created. The constituent power went into abeyance, leaving the work of government to the authorities now constituted…. There were two levels of law, a higher law or constitution that only the people could make or amend…. Such was the theory, and it was a distinctively American one…. European thinkers… lacked the idea of the people as a constituent power.”
–R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution:
A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800,
Princeton University Press, 2014, pp. 159-161.
“[T]o reduce the scope for institutional interest, constitutions ought to be written by specially convened assemblies and not by bodies that also serve as ordinary legislatures. Nor should the legislatures be given a central place in the process of ratification. In both these respects, the [1987 U.S.] Federal Convention can serve as a model.”
“The important distinction so well understood in America, between a Constitution established by the people and unalterable by the government, and a law established by the government and alterable by the government, seems to have been little understood and less observed in any other country. Wherever the supreme power of legislation has resided, has been supposed to reside also a full power to change the form of the government.”
“Whenever [the people] shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it…. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself…. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse.”
I am profoundly sensible of the honor you have done me in asking me to address you. You are engaged in the fundamental work of self-government; you are engaged in framing a constitution under and in accordance with which the people are to get and to do justice and absolutely to rule themselves. No representative body can have a higher task….
I am emphatically a believer in constitutionalism, and because of this fact I no less emphatically protest against any theory that would make of the constitution a means of thwarting instead of securing the absolute right of the people to rule themselves and to provide for their social and industrial well-being….
I hold it to be the duty of every public servant, and of every man who in public or private life holds a position of leadership in thought or action, to endeavor honestly and fearlessly to guide his fellow countrymen to right decisions; but I emphatically dissent from the view that it is either wise or necessary to try to devise methods which under the Constitution will automatically prevent the people from deciding for themselves what governmental action they deem just and proper.
It is impossible to invent constitutional devices which will prevent the popular will from being effective for wrong without also preventing it from being effective for right.
The only safe course to follow in this great American democracy is to provide for making the popular judgment really effective.
When this is done, then it is our duty to see that the people, having the full power, realize their heavy responsibility for exercising that power aright.
But it is a false constitutionalism, a false statesmanship, to endeavor by the exercise of a perverted ingenuity to seem to give the people full power and at the same time to trick them out of it….
If the American people are not fit for popular government, and if they should of right be the servants and not the masters of the men whom they themselves put in office, then Lincoln’s work was wasted and the whole system of government upon which this great democratic Republic rests is a failure….
I do not say that the people are infallible. But I do say that our whole history shows that the American people are more often sound in their decisions than is the case with any of the governmental bodies to whom, for their convenience, they have delegated portions of their power.
“[T]he advocate of constitutional reform in an American state should be endowed with the patience of Job and the sense of time of a geologist.”
–W. Brook Graves, State Constitutional Law, 1966