The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse


U.S. states where the people can use a Periodic Constitutional Convention Referendum (PCCR)
to bypass the legislature's gatekeeping power over constitutional amendment

About

The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse is a project of iSolon.org. Its mission is to educate the public about upcoming periodic referendums on whether to call a state constitutional convention.

Various factors have contributed to creating an information vacuum on the subject of periodic state constitutional conventions. These factors include an absence of education on the subject in high school, college, and graduate level courses on American government; lack of academic interest in the subject in the fields of political science, political history, and election law; the infrequent, local, and seemingly quixotic nature of state constitutional convention based democratic reform; and the well-resourced and fierce opposition to state constitutional conventions by state legislatures and groups most effective at exerting influence via state legislatures. Despite these factors, the periodic state constitutional convention serves an essential democratic function within the system of American government. It is also an institution worthy of improvement.

To report mistakes on this website, please use this website’s contact form. It is inevitable that many of the links on this website will become non-operational over time. Many can nevertheless be accessed by going to  https://archive.org/web (The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine) and entering the apparently defunct URL.

This website is a work in progress, with some notable gaps that are gradually being filled in year by year. Gaps will generally be filled as the referendums near in the various states that have them. The detailed information about each state is not located on this domain/website but on the subdomains of concon.info that constitute the states that, in recent years, have held state constitutional conventions. For links to those websites, see this website’s home page.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president and author of the Declaration of Indendence

(inscribed on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC adjacent to Jefferson's statue)

The Jefferson Memorial

Website Editor,
J.H. Snider

J.H. Snider edits The State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, a project of iSolon.org, a public policy institute that focuses on the most difficult areas of democratic reform, where elected officials have a conflict of interest in bringing about reforms that might reduce their own power. Snider has been president of iSolon.org since 2007.

Snider believes that the periodic state constitutional convention serves a vital democratic function, yet has been neglected by both scholars and practitioners. He hopes that when the public is informed of the institution’s democratic function and history, including both its strengths and weaknesses, it will support and seek to enhance this mechanism of democratic reform.

From 2011-2013, he was a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. During Spring Semester 2008, Snider was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. He has also been a fellow at the New America Foundation (2001-2007), American Political Science Association (1999-2000), and Northwestern University (1998-1999). He began his research career as a senior research assistant at the Harvard Business School, where he worked with the professors of entrepreneurship and leadership. He has a Ph.D. in American Government from Northwestern University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College.

Snider is the author of Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America’s Founding, Routledge, 2006. He is a member of Oxford University’s U.S. State Constitutions Network, and the author of more than seventy local op-eds on upcoming state constitutional convention referendums, which are compiled in The U.S. State Con-Con Papers.

ISBN 9781041022596
528 Pages 18 B/W Illustrations
May 6, 2026 by Routledge

Compilation of State-Specific Articles

Snider, J.H., The U.S. State Con-Con Papers, Social Science Research Network, May 4, 2026. This is a compilation of the non-scholarly articles listed below. It has two advantages over the links below. First, many of the articles below are behind paywalls or have broken links. Second, its book format provides a different, more convenient type of access for many purposes. 

      State-Specific Commentaries on the
      Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Michigan’s 2026 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Snider, J.H., Why political elites fear a Michigan constitutional convention, Bridge Michigan, April 27, 2026.

      Rhode Island’s 2024 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      U.S. Virgin Islands 2023-2024  Constitutional Convention Enabling Act

      (The last time a U.S. state enacted a constitutional convention enabling act was close to four decades ago.)

      Alaska’s 2022 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Missouri’s 2022 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      New Hampshire’s 2022 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Iowa’s 2020 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Hawaii‘s 2018 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      New York’s 2017 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Illinois’ 2016 Constitutional Initiative Referendums

      Rhode Island’s 2014 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Blog Posts on Rhode Island’s 2014 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Maryland’s 2010 Constitutional Convention Referendum

      Analogous Process at the Local/Charter level of Government

      Snider, J.H., Fix Anne Arundel’s decennial charter revision process, Washington Post, Oct. 5, 2016.

       

       

       

      Miscellaneous Publications

      Book

      Snider, J.H., Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendums: Their Development Since America’s Founding, Routledge, May 6, 2026.

      Articles and Papers

      Campaign Spending Law & Politics for Constitutional Convention Referendums: A Case Study of Alaska, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, Sept. 7, 2024.

      The Development of the Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendum Since America’s Founding, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Montreal, Sept. 18, 2022.

      Snider, J.H., 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. Summarized in Snider, J.H., Opportunity for Reform: Educate New Yorkers on constitutional convention, Albany Times Union, June 10, 2017.

      Snider, J.H., et al., The Politics of State Constitutional Reform, American Political Science Association Law & Courts Section, Fall 2016.

      Conference Presentations

      J.H. Snider’s presentation, Reforming the Process of Democratic Reform, at the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, Mexico City, March 2, 2023.

        J.H. Snider’s presentation, How the Public Reasons about State Constitutional Convention Referendums, at State Constitutions and Governance in the U.S., a conference held at the Utah Valley University Center for Constitutional Studies, November 3-4, 2021.

        American Political Science Association Short Course

        Snider, J.H., et al., A Political Primer on the Periodic State Constitutional Convention Referendum, Short course presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 31, 2016.