The Iowa State Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse
This website provides news, pro & con, historical, and other information related to Iowa’s constitutionally mandated November 3, 2020 referendum on whether to call a state constitutional convention.
Documents
Primary Iowa Constitutional Documents
Iowa Constitution, Iowa Legislature. Available at https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/statutory/constitution#:~:text=Iowa%20has%20held%20three%20constitutional,of%20the%20State%20of%20Iowa..
Constitution of the State of Iowa. State Library of Iowa. Available at http://publications.iowa.gov/135/1/history/7-7.html.
Constitution of the State of Iowa (codified). State Library of Iowa. Available at http://publications.iowa.gov/9883/1/CONSTITUTION_OF_THE_STATE_OF_IOWA.pdf
The Iowa Constitution. Iowa PBS. Available at http://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/iowa-constitution.
Shambaugh, Benjamin Franklin. Fragments of the Debates of the Iowa Constitutional Conventions of 1844 and 1846: Along with Press Comments and Other Materials on the Constitutions of 1844 and 1846. State Historical Society of Iowa, 1900. Available at https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iA-SrpPQKoUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=iowa+%22constitutional+convention%22&ots=d5BWUOee9R&sig=34fgWcZ1SVIS913aNZwoF9Cjm3g#v=onepage&q&f=false
Lord, William Blair. The debates of the Constitutional convention: of the state of Iowa, assembled at Iowa City, Monday, January 19, 1857. Vol. 1. Luse, Laue & Co., 1857. Available at
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HrmCAAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=iowa+%22constitutional+convention%22&ots=wzIlE5GxsI&sig=iiu3R1zNG7pKJqIVeYj2YVEcthY#v=onepage&q=iowa%20%22constitutional%20convention%22&f=false
Shambaugh, Benjamin Franklin. Fragments of the Debates of the Iowa Constitutional Conventions of 1844 and 1846: Along with Press Comments and Other Materials on the Constitutions of 1844 and 1846. State Historical Society of Iowa, 1900.
The Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Iowa. Iowa State Library. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20160102105101/http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/services/collections/law-library/iaconst/
Iowa Legislature Constitutional Convention Documentation
1844, 1846, and 1857 Convened Constitutional Conventions, Iowa Legislature. This provides links to many of the documents listed above. Available at https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/statutory/constitution/constConventions.
Journal of the State Convention on Repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, Governor’s Office, July 10, 1933. The above is a bibliographic reference. The journal itself is here.
Iowa Secretary of State Constitutional Convention Election Results
2010 Constitutional Convention Election Results (pages 6-7 )
2000 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 1)
1990 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 51)
1980 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 7)
1970 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 3)
1960 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 5)
1950 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 5)
1900 Constitutional Convention Election Results (page 251)
See also the Iowa Official Register, Iowa Secretary of State; e.g., the 1900 edition and many other editions include basic information on Iowa’s first three state constitutional conventions.
Iowa as a Territory
“An act establishing the Territorial Government of Wisconsin,” Twenty-Fourth U.S. Congress, April 20, 1836, Available at https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/24th-congress/Session%201/c24s1ch54.pdf
Secondary Iowa Constitutional Documents
Major Works
Schmidhauser, John Richard. Iowa’s Campaign for a Constitutional Convention in 1960. No. 30. McGraw-Hill, 1963.
Shambaugh, Benjamin Franklin. The Constitutions of Iowa. State Historical Society, 1934.
Stark, Jack. The Iowa State Constitution. Oxford University Press on Demand, 2011. A book review is available at https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1694&context=annals-of-iowa. The current edition is Pettys, Todd E. The Iowa State Constitution. Oxford University Press, 2017. A preview is available at https://smile.amazon.com/Constitution-Oxford-Commentaries-Constitutions-United/dp/0190490837/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=the+iowa+state+constitution&qid=1593067716&s=books&sr=1-2.
Wiggins, Charles W. “Constitutional Convention Issue in Iowa (1960).” The Annals of Iowa 40, no. 3 (1970): 171-190. Available at https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7937&context=annals-of-iowa
Brief Observations
Conserving Iowa’s Constitution. Iowa Secretary of State. 1989. Note: two page pamphlet. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20151029115014/http://publications.iowa.gov/17455/1/ConservIA.pdf
Cook, Claude R. “Territorial and State Organization.” The Annals of Iowa 29, no. 8 (1949): 599-607. Available at https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7058&context=annals-of-iowa
Cross, Steven C. Cross, “The Drafting of Iowa’s Constitution,” Iowa Secretary of State. Available at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XaMOqc6PlmcJ:publications.iowa.gov/135/1/history/7-6.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Iowas’s 1920 Unconvened Constitutional Convention.
See Schmidhauser, John Richard. Iowa’s Campaign for a Constitutional Convention in 1960. No. 30. McGraw-Hill, 1963, p. 3.
Iowas’s 1900 Unconvened Constitutional Convention.
H., F. I., “The Constitution of 1857 and the People.” The Annals of Iowa 8, no. 1 (1907): 65-71, p. 68. Available at https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3391&context=annals-of-iowa. For a sense of how voting technology has changed and could be prone to error, see Time Travel Iowa: 1906 Voting Machine, Iowa PBS, .
Search This Website