HJM2 - a legislative bill to support 
a Constitutional Amendment

June 4, 2015
The following is a revised version of HJM2.  Originally written by Wolf-Pac and then revised by mutual agreement between Wolf-Pac and Move to Amend Oregon to reflect our mutual values. Please contact Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, expressing your support of having this move forward to a vote in the full House. 
To the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled:

We, your memorialists, the Seventy-eighth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, in legislative session assembled, respectfully represent as follows:

Whereas American elections should be free of the corrupting influence of excessive spending by outside interests and fair enough that any citizen can run for public office; and

Whereas the first President of the United States, George Washington, stated, “The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government”; and

Whereas it was the stated intention of the framers of the United States Constitution that Congress should be “dependent on the people alone” (James Madison, Federalist No. 52); and

Whereas that dependency has evolved from a dependency on the people alone to a dependency on those who spend excessively in elections, through campaigns or third-party groups; and

Whereas the United States Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U.S. 310 (2010)) removed restrictions on amounts of independent political spending, and further decisions of the nation’s high court both before and afterward have undermined the principle of political equality and eroded the foundations of representative democracy in America; and

Whereas these decisions have resulted in the unjust influence of powerful economic forces that have supplanted the will of the people by undermining our ability to choose political leadership, write our own laws and determine the fate of our state; and

Whereas the rights of natural persons are inherent: and

Whereas corporations are not natural persons people, but artificial legal entities such as corporations, unions and for-profit and nonprofit organizations have been inappropriately granted “rights”, as if they were natural persons, by a number of Supreme Court decisions; and

Whereas money is property and not speech, and the Congress of the United States, state legislatures, and local legislative bodies should have the authority to regulate the contribution and spending of moneys for political purposes to ensure a level playing field for all people regardless of their economic status; and

Whereas Article V of the United States Constitution empowers the people and states of the United States of America to use the constitutional amendment process to correct those egregiously wrong decisions of the United States Supreme Court that undermine the heart of our democracy and republican form of government; and

Whereas Article V of the United States Constitution requires Congress to call a convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution upon “the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States”; and

Whereas the State of Oregon sees the need for a convention to propose amendments in order to address concerns such as those raised here and by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United and substantially similar cases and events long before and afterward, and desires that said convention should be limited to these concerns; and

Whereas the State of Oregon desires that the delegates to the convention be composed equally of individuals currently elected to state and local office, or be selected by election in each congressional district for the purpose of serving as delegates; and

Whereas the State of Oregon desires that individuals elected or appointed to federal office, now or in the past, be prohibited from serving as delegates to the convention, and intends to retain the ability to restrict or expand the power of its own delegates within the limits expressed herein; and

Whereas the State of Oregon intends that this be a continuing application considered together with applications calling for a convention adopted or currently pending in other states, including the State of Vermont, the State of Illinois and the State of California, and future applications until such time as two-thirds of the several states have applied for a convention and said convention is convened by Congress; now, therefore,

Two resolution choices:

Be It Resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon:

(1) We, the members of the Seventy-eighth Legislative Assembly, pursuant to Article V of the United States Constitution, hereby petition Congress to call a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments to the United States Constitution.

(2) This application shall be deemed an application for a convention to address each and any of the subjects listed in this memorial; for purposes of determining whether two-thirds of the states have applied for a convention addressing any subject, this application is to be aggregated with all other applications which mention the Citizens United decision, the use of money in politics or its status as speech, the status of corporations as persons with constitutional rights, or the goal of free and fair elections.

(3) This memorial constitutes a continuing application and remains in effect until rescission by any sitting session of the legislature of this State.

(4) A copy of this memorial shall be sent to the Senate Majority Leader, to the Secretary of the Senate, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, to the Archivist of the United States, to each member of the Oregon Congressional Delegation and to the presiding officers of the legislative chambers in each state of the United States requesting their cooperation in issuing a petition to Congress to call a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments pursuant to Article V of the United States Constitution.





Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.  Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of "We the People" by who and for whom our Constitution was established."   John Paul Stevens US Supreme Court Justice