Proposals to amend the U.S. Constitution currently in play cover campaign finance, a balanced federal budget, congressional term limits, the Electoral College, and the long-running Equal Rights Amendment, along with a state-led push for an Article V convention. None is close to ratification. The math built into Article V is the reason: only 27 amendments have made it through in more than two centuries, and the supermajorities required at every stage give each of these efforts steep odds.
What It Takes to Amend the Constitution
Article V lays out two proposal routes and two ratification routes. Every amendment so far has followed the same path: two-thirds of both the House and Senate approve the text, then three-fourths of state legislatures ratify. That threshold is 38 of the 50 states today. The alternative proposal route, a convention called at the request of 34 state legislatures, has never been used.
Once 38 states ratify, the Archivist of the United States certifies the amendment and publishes it as part of the Constitution. Federal law requires the Archivist to issue a certificate naming the ratifying states and declaring the amendment valid.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 1 U.S. Code 106b – Amendments to Constitution That step usually looks like a formality. The Equal Rights Amendment fight, discussed below, is the exception.
Proposals Active in the 119th Congress
Amendments get introduced every session. Most never see a hearing. The proposals that reappear year after year are worth watching anyway, because they show where political pressure is concentrated.
Campaign Finance
In September 2025, Representative Jim McGovern reintroduced the Free and Fair Elections Amendment. It would bar corporations from spending money to influence federal elections, cap individual contributions and expenditures in federal races at $1,000, and require Congress to establish public campaign financing for federal candidates. States would keep the power to set their own limits for state and local races. If ratified, it would overturn Citizens United v. FEC and several related rulings.2Office of Congressman Jim McGovern. McGovern Reintroduces Constitutional Amendment to End Big Money in Politics A broader version from the 118th Congress, H.J.Res. 13, would have granted Congress and the states power to regulate political spending without specifying dollar caps.3Congress.gov. H.J.Res.13 – 118th Congress (2023-2024)
Balanced Budget
H.J.Res. 17, introduced in the 119th Congress, would prohibit total federal spending in any fiscal year from exceeding total revenue unless two-thirds of both chambers approve the excess by roll call vote. The President would have to submit an annual budget in which outlays do not exceed receipts. Debt principal repayment is excluded from the spending calculation.4Congress.gov. H.J.Res.17 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) – Proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution of the United States The two-thirds override is designed to make deficit spending structurally hard outside wartime or serious economic downturns.
Congressional Term Limits
H.J.Res. 5 of the 119th Congress would cap House members at six two-year terms and Senators at two six-year terms, both totaling 12 years. Serving more than half of someone else’s unexpired term counts as a full term.5Congress.gov. H.J.Res.5 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) – Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to Limit the Number of Terms an Individual May Serve as a Member of Congress Polls consistently show cross-party support for term limits, but sitting members are being asked to vote to end their own careers. That obstacle is a large part of why term-limit advocates also push the convention route.
Electoral College Reform
Proposals to abolish the Electoral College have been introduced in nearly every Congress for decades. H.J.Res. 227 in the 118th Congress proposed direct election of the President and Vice President by the candidate receiving the most nationwide votes.6Congress.gov. H.J.Res.227 – 118th Congress (2023-2024) These proposals get attention whenever a candidate wins the presidency without the popular vote, as in 2000 and 2016. They face the same structural problem as every amendment: small states that benefit from the current arrangement have little reason to ratify their own diminished influence.
The State-Led Push for an Article V Convention
Because Congress has little incentive to propose amendments that limit its own power, several organized campaigns are asking states to force a convention instead. The Convention of States Project is the most prominent. It seeks a convention limited to three topics: fiscal restraints on the federal government, limits on federal power, and term limits for federal officials. As of 2025, roughly 20 state legislatures have passed resolutions on those topics, well short of the 34 needed.
Separate campaigns focused only on a balanced budget have accumulated their own state applications. Totaling the count across campaigns is hard. Application wording varies, some states have rescinded earlier applications, and Congress has never set up a formal tallying process. Whether applications from different campaigns on overlapping topics can be aggregated toward the 34-state threshold is itself an unresolved constitutional question.
The largest source of anxiety is the runaway scenario. Once delegates gather, nothing in Article V explicitly prevents them from proposing amendments on any subject. Supporters argue that a convention exceeding its authorized scope would be acting unconstitutionally and that any proposed amendment would still need 38 states to ratify. Opponents point out that the 1787 Constitutional Convention was itself called to revise the Articles of Confederation and instead replaced them entirely. No Article V convention has ever been held, so there is no case law or established procedure governing its scope, and that uncertainty has stalled the movement for decades.7Constitution Annotated. Overview of Article V, Amending the Constitution
The Equal Rights Amendment Standoff
The ERA is the one previously proposed amendment still generating live legal fights. Congress approved it in 1972 with a seven-year ratification deadline, later extended to June 30, 1982. By that deadline, 35 of the required 38 states had ratified.8Congress.gov. The Equal Rights Amendment – Background and Recent Legal Developments Decades later, Nevada ratified in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in January 2020. That technically brought the count to 38.
The central legal question is whether a deadline placed in the proposing resolution is binding after it has passed. Supporters point out that the deadline was not part of the amendment’s text, that Congress can remove or extend it, and that the 27th Amendment was ratified 203 years after it was proposed, proving amendments do not automatically expire. That said, the 27th Amendment’s original proposing resolution contained no deadline at all, so the two situations are not identical. Opponents argue Congress plainly set a deadline for the ERA, and the states that ratified after 1982 acted too late.
Five states also tried to rescind their ratifications before 1982: Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Article V says nothing about rescission. The most relevant precedent cuts against it: when Congress declared the 14th Amendment ratified in 1868, it counted New Jersey and Ohio despite both states’ attempts to withdraw their approval.9Constitution Annotated. Effect of Prior Rejection of an Amendment or Rescission of Ratification
Virginia, Illinois, and Nevada sued the Archivist in January 2020 to compel certification. The district court dismissed the case in 2021, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed unanimously in February 2023, holding that the plaintiff states had not shown Congress lacked authority to set a deadline or that the Archivist was legally required to certify the ERA.10Justia Law. State of Illinois v. David Ferriero, No. 21-5096 (D.C. Cir. 2023) In 2025, the National Archives confirmed that the Archivist cannot legally publish the ERA under current legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.11National Archives. Statement on the Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Process
Congressional supporters are still trying to fix the problem legislatively. S.J.Res. 38 in the 119th Congress would retroactively establish the ratification of the ERA, effectively erasing the deadline.12Congress.gov. S.J.Res.38 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) – A Joint Resolution Establishing the Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment Whether a simple majority in Congress can override a deadline originally set by a two-thirds supermajority is another contested question with no settled answer.
Why the Courts Probably Will Not Decide Any of This
Federal courts have generally treated amendment ratification disputes as political questions belonging to Congress. The leading case is Coleman v. Miller from 1939, where the Supreme Court held that Congress has the “final determination” of whether a proposed amendment has lost its vitality through the passage of time. The Court also ruled that the effect of a state’s prior rejection or attempted withdrawal is for Congress to decide, not the judiciary.13Justia Law. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939)
That doctrine matters for every proposal on this page. If courts will not decide whether a deadline is enforceable, whether rescissions count, or whether a convention has exceeded its authorized scope, the answers rest with Congress and, at the last step, the Archivist. Congress makes those calls by majority vote shaped by political calculation. The practical takeaway for anyone tracking a constitutional amendment proposal is the same: the process is a political one, and a proposal that cannot muster the political support to clear the supermajority hurdles is not going to be rescued by a court.