<P> Each time the amendment process has been initiated since 1789, the first method has been used . All 33 amendments submitted to the states for ratification originated in the Congress . The second method, the convention option, which Alexander Hamilton (writing in The Federalist No. 85) believed would serve as a barrier "against the encroachments of the national authority", has yet to be successfully invoked, although not for lack of activity in the states . </P> <P> Three times in the 20th century, concerted efforts were undertaken by proponents of particular amendments to secure the number of applications necessary to summon an Article V Convention . These included conventions to consider amendments to (1) provide for popular election of U.S. Senators; (2) permit the states to include factors other than equality of population in drawing state legislative district boundaries; and (3) to propose an amendment requiring the U.S. budget to be balanced under most circumstances . The campaign for a popularly elected Senate is frequently credited with "prodding" the Senate to join the House of Representatives in proposing what became the Seventeenth Amendment to the states in 1912, while the latter two campaigns came very close to meeting the two - thirds threshold in the 1960s and 1980s, respectively . </P> <P> Once approved by Congress, the joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment does not require Presidential approval before it goes out to the states . While Article I Section 7 provides that all federal legislation must, before becoming Law, be presented to the President for his or her signature or veto, Article V provides no such requirement for constitutional amendments approved by Congress, or by a federal convention . Thus the president has no official function in the process . In Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798), the Supreme Court affirmed that it is not necessary to place constitutional amendments before the President for approval or veto . </P> <P> After being officially proposed, either by Congress or a national convention of the states, a constitutional amendment must then be ratified by three - fourths of the states . Congress is authorized to choose whether a proposed amendment is sent to the state legislatures or to state ratifying conventions for ratification . Amendments ratified by the states under either procedure are indistinguishable and have equal force as part of the Constitution . Of the 33 amendments submitted to the states for ratification, the state convention method has been used for only one, the Twenty - first Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1933 . This was also one of only four times that Congress has placed the mode of ratification in the body of an amendment rather than in accompanying legislation; the others being the Eighteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty - second Amendments . In United States v. Sprague (1931), the Supreme Court affirmed the authority of Congress to decide how each individual constitutional amendment is ratified, in accordance with the options provided in Article V and the equal validity of amendments properly ratified in either fashion . The Court had earlier, in Hawke v. Smith (1920), ruled the ratification of the proposed Nineteenth Amendment (which Congress had sent to the state legislatures for ratification) by the Legislature of Ohio could not be referred to the electors (voters) of the state, and that the Ohio Constitution, in requiring such a referendum, was inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution . </P>

What needed to be added to the constitution before it could be ratified