Key USVI Constitutional Convention Dates

2024 to 2027 Constitutional Convention Calendar*

* For additional information, see section below entitled “Major 6th Convention Government Milestones” and the 2024 Sixth Constitutional Convention Election Calendar provided by the Elections System of the Virgin Islands. To expand the timeline to make the text more readable, click on it and a larger version will appear.

Countdown until the constitutional convention delegate election

Day(s)

:

Hour(s)

:

Minute(s)

:

Second(s)

The Purpose of a Constitutional Convention

USVI rightfully wants its own territorial constitution. To win one, Congress mandates that any U.S. territory must propose one via a constitutional convention elected independently of the territory’s legislature. The democratic rationale for this process is that a legislature would have a conflict of interest designing its own powers, hence the need for an independently elected body to design its powers.

A convention only has constitutional proposal power. For the constitution to take effect, it must be ratified by both USVI voters and the U.S. Congress.

Alas, for more than sixty years USVI’s Legislature has sought to win constitutional amendment power for itself by undermining the independence of the constitutional convention process. In its first two attempts, it even granted explicit veto power to itself–an absolute no-no for Congress, although Congress was too polite to say so. More recent attempts, including the legislature’s enabling act for USVI’s 6th constitutional convention, have been more subtle.

On Nov. 3, 2020, USVI voters approved a referendum calling for a 6th constitutional convention for USVI. In the wee hours of Dec. 29, 2022, USVI’s Legislature approved an enabling act to elect delegates to the convention. On Jan. 19, 2023, the Governor signed the enabling act into law. The enabling has subsequently been amended multiple times, each time to fix careless mistakes in the previous enabling act and without following standard due process for a legislative body. Standard due process includes public notice of proposed changes, multiple public readings of proposed changes on different dates, and bill titles reflective of their contents. Failure to follow standard due process not only undermines democratic accountability but invites the type of careless mistakes the legislature has made.

Congress mandates a constitutional convention for two reasons:

First, tradition. Since the early 19th Century, Congress has mandated that U.S. territories seeking to draft a constitution–usually but not always to seek statehood–draft the constitution via an independently elected constitutional convention.

Second, democratic accountability. According to democratic theory applied to drafting constitutions, the constituent power (the sovereign people) grants powers to the constituted powers (the various branches of government) via a written constitution. No constituted power, such as the legislature, should be granted control of the constitution-making power because it would have an incentive to strengthen its own power at the expense of both competing constituted powers and the constituent power.

–J.H. Snider, Editor
USVI Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse
September 11, 2024

J.H. Snider Publications

Snider, J.H., Policy Brief: The Proper Scope of USVI’s Constitutional Convention, USVI Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, January 2, 2024.

Snider, J.H., Policy Brief: Fixing USVI’s Constitutional Convention Enabling Act, USVI Constitutional Convention Clearinghouse, March 27, 2023, revised with addendum on January 1, 2024. The accompanying original news release can be found here.

Snider, J.H., USVI’s End-run Against America’s State Constitutional Tradition, Constitutional Conversations (a publication of the Center for Constitutional Design based at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law), June 7, 2023.

Snider, J.H., Implementing the Constitutional Convention Voters Approved in 2020, The Virgin Islands Consortium, March 24, 2023.

Snider, J.H., Where a U.S. Territory Can’t Get Its Own Constitution: A Self-Serving Legislature Drives the Plot in a Story of Democratic Failure, Zocalo Public Square, March 2, 2023.

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

Results of the Nov. 3, 2020 Referendum on
Whether To Call A Constitutional Convention

Description Vote
Yes Vote # 7,275
No Vote # 2,840
Total Yes or No Vote # 10,115
% Yes of Total 71.92%
% No of Total 28.08%
Ballots Cast # 18,130
Total Votes on the Referendum / Voters Voting at the Election % 55.79%
Registered Voters # 53,341
Turnout % 33.9%

Source:  Official Results: Territorial Election Summary Results Report USVI General, November 3, 2020, Office of the Supervisor of Elections, Nov. 16, 2020,

Note: For details on convention call enabling act and the subsequent proposed convening enabling act, including, the rules for the election of delegates, see the menu item “Enabling Act.”

 

Major 6th Convention Government Milestones

May 5, 2020. Enabling act, Bill No. 33-0292, providing for a Nov. 3, 2020 referendum on whether to call a 6th constitutional convention.

June 29, 2020. Amended enabling act, Bill No. 33-0339, providing for a Nov. 3, 2020 referendum Nov. 3, 2020.

Nov. 3, 2020. Voters overwhelmingly approve referendum to call a USVI constitutional convention.

Jan. 11, 2021. The Legislature receives Senators Sarauw and Whitaker’s Bill No. 0153: An Act establishing the Sixth Constitutional Convention of the Virgin Islands.

Jan. 21, 2021. The Legislature assigns Senators Sarauw and Whitaker’s Bill No. 0153: An Act establishing the Sixth Constitutional Convention of the Virgin Islands.

Nov. 16, 2021. Senators Sarauw and Whitaker publicly release Bill No. 0153: An Act establishing the Sixth Constitutional Convention of the Virgin Islands.

Jan. 19, 2022. Hearing on Bill No. 34-0153, including the election of delegates, for the voter-approved constitutional convention. Invited testifiers only. Reported out to the Committee on Rules and Judiciary.

March 23, 2022. Hearing on Bill No. 34-0153, including the election of delegates, for the voter-approved constitutional convention. Invited testifiers only.

April 6, 2022. USVI Board of Elections approves dates of delegate election process, pending the legislature’s timely approval of its proposed enabling act. No written minutes of the meeting is created because there is a video recording of the meeting. However, the video recording of the meeting is only available internally to Board of Elections members and staff with proper credentials–unless the recording is requested under USVI’s Public Records Act to Board Chair Raymond Williams. Despite a Public Records Act request, the Board Chair refuses to provide a copy of the public documents discussed at the April 6, 2022 meeting.

May 10, 2022. Postponed hearing on the legislature’s proposed enabling act. Invited testifiers only.

May 16, 2022. Postponed hearing on the legislature’s proposed enabling act. Invited testifiers only.

May 17, 2022. USVI Board of Elections deadine, pending legislative action, for delegates to submit paperwork to appear on the ballot.

Nov. 8, 2022. USVI Board of Elections approved date for delegate elections.

Dec. 29, 2022. Hearing on the legislature’s proposed convention enabling act, Bill No. 34-0153. Invited testifiers only.

Dec. 30, 2022. Via a voice vote, the legislature unanimously approves amendment 34-740 to Bill No. 34-0153 shortly after 11:00 pm on Dec. 29, but it is recorded as being approved  on Dec. 30.  The legislature skips reading the amendment and then refuses, prior to the Governor’s signing of the enabling act on Jan. 19, 2023, to either post the amended bill on its website or make it available to those who request it. The refusal includes providing a copy of the amendment passed shortly before midnight on Dec. 29, 2022. As of Feb. 2, 2022, the text of the amendment still hadn’t been posted online or made available offline in response to numerous requests for it to the Governor’s Office, senators, and the legislative counsel.

Jan. 19, 2023. The Governor signs the convention enabling legislation, Act No. 8681, into law. As subsequently posted online.

Jan. 20, 2023. Governor’s transmittal letter to the legislature notifying all senators that he has signed Bill No. 0153 into law.

Jan. 23, 2023. Governor’s 2023 State of the Territory Speech doesn’t mention the 6th constitutional convention legislation he just signed.

Jan. 24, 2023. J.H. Snider writes to the Legislature’s leadership and the Governor alerting them to the inconsistencies and errors in their recently approved legislation that makes it impossible to implement.

April 28, 2023. Del. Stacey Plaskett, representing the U.S. Virgin Islands in Congress, introduces H.R.3026 – To provide for the adoption of the Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands as the constitution of the United States Virgin Islands. All congressional actions on the bill can be found here.  Plaskett issued a press release announcing the bill’s introduction, including statements of support from USVI scholars. See PLASKETT INTRODUCES LEGISLATION TO ADOPT THE REVISED ORGANIC ACT AND ITS AMENDMENTS AS THE VIRGIN ISLANDS CONSTITUTION. The bill is a clever run around of the Act No. 8681 morass. If Congress passed it, it would clean up that morass. But it would also break more than 150 years of Congressional precedent regarding granting new territories a constitution of their own. That has traditionally required an independent constitutional convention, where the people, not the territorial legislature, is granted control of the amendment process.

The bill summary includes the following key line granting the legislature future monopoly power over the initiation and thus proposal of constitutional amendments: “The bill permits the legislature of the Virgin Islands to propose amendments to such constitution by a resolution approved by not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature.” Of the five new states that joined the United States and got a constitution during the last 125 years–that is, beginning in the 20th Century–only one lacked a provision for bypassing the legislature in the proposal of constitutional amendments (in the fifth state it barely lost, arguably due to fierce corporate opposition by the railroad industry and its allies). The two methods used in the United States for bypassing the legislature are the constitutional initiative (18 states) and the periodic constitutional convention referendum (14 states, including 6 that also have the constitutional initiative).

May 4, 2023. Election System of the Virgin Islands promotes and then hosts “The Great Debate”. The question for debate is: “The Virgin Islands needs to ratify a constitution before defining its continued relationship with the United States of America.” The debate organizers were all government officials and framed the debate based on the assumptions USVI’s legislature has made in promoting a constitution.

July 20, 2023. The Legislature passes Bill No. 35-0035 (Act No. 8734), “An Act amending title 20 Virgin Islands Code, part II, chapter 39, section 436(b), by expanding the definition of “disabled veteran” for the purposes of eligibility for a disabled window decal, making various appropriations and amending Act No. 8681.” Section IV amends Act No. 8681. The Legislature’s strategy was apparently to fix their embarrassing errors under the public radar and with as little public debate as possible. Part of this strategy was to on Feb. 27, 2023 introduce a totally unrelated bill on veterans’ benefits and then, on July 20, 2023, just before the final vote on it, amend it with totally unrelated amendments and without any advance public notice. This strategy appears to have been successful, as the first press report does not show up until August 13, 2023, and the reporter seems to have been so embarrassed at missing the story that she didn’t include in her story the bill number and date of passage concerning the legislation she was writing about. But kudos to her for eventually finding the story and recognizing that what the Legislature attempted to sweep under the rug was in fact highly newsworthy. Also, the two legislative staffers responsible for these amendments promised me multiple times to give me a heads up on the date when their bosses would hold a public meeting to fix the flawed legislation they passed on Dec. 30, 2022. This repeated promise to me they broke. The two staffers are Shawna K. Richards, Chief of Staff, Office of Sen. Novelle E. Francis, Jr., and Jada M. Lark, Chief of Staff, Senator Alma Francis Heyliger.

September 19, 2023. The Legislature introduces Bill No. 35-0159, with the seemingly unrelated title of “An Act providing a lump-sum appropriation from the Indirect Cost Fund to the Office of Management and Budget, the Virgin Islands Division of Personnel, the Virgin Islands Department of Property and Procurement and the Virgin Islands Department of Finance for operating expenses for the fiscal year October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024.” 

Dec. 1, 2023. Elections System of the Virgin Islands publishes 2024 Sixth Constitutional Convention Election Calendar (posted on the official website Dec. 8, 2023).

December 19, 2023. The Legislature amends Bill No. 35-0159. Buried in this amendment is a new provision to yet again modify the enabling act for the convention. It is apparently “specially amended to the floor” without first going through committee. The amendment language appears to address some unstated legal uncertainty with the old language. The language is:

Section 4 of Act No. 8681 is amended as follows:

(a) In subsection (a) by striking “five” and inserting “seven” and by striking the language after “residcnt”; and
(b) In subsection (e) by striking the language after “seek election”.

Jan. 12, 2024. The Governor signs Bill No. 35-0159 into law as Act No. 8788.

Feb. 6 & 8, 2024. Government candidate nomination filing training respectively in St. Croix and St. Thomas. See “Candidates” page on this website for details.

Feb. 8, 2024. The Legislature quietly informs the Elections Office that it intends to introduce legislation in March depriving St. John of its previously granted dedicated seat representing it at the convention. Instead, the seat will become an at-large seat. Other amendments to the enabling act may also be introduced in March. If introduced, this would be the third set of amendments to the enabling act since it was originally passed on Dec. 30, 2022. To date, all the amendments have avoided public notice and controversy by passing them without ordinary legislative due process.

March 25, 2024. The Legislature passes Amendment 35-669 to Act Number 8681, to amend the enabling act for USVI’s upcoming constitutional convention. The dating on the bottom of the amendment reads: “Amendment No. 35-669/ February 13, 2024/ Revised March 21, 2024/PFA.” The amendment provides modest additional rights and compensation to USVI government workers campaigning for convention delegate; they can take a leave of absence and utilize annual leave. It replaces the St. John delegate seat with an at-large one. It is surprising that St. John residents do not complain publicly about this loss of voting power.

May 21, 2024. Election System of the Virgin Islands posts the list of candidates qualified to run for constitutional convention delegate on Nov. 5, 2024.

April 23 & 25, 2024. Government candidate campaign disclosure training respectively in St. Croix and St. Thomas

May 14-21, 2024. Window for convention nominations to be filed with elections office.

Oct. 14, 2024. Voting begins for the constitutional convention delegates.

Nov. 5, 2024. Election for constitutional convention delegates.

Jan. 27, 2025. Constitutional convention convenes.

Oct. 25, 2025. Deadline for the constitutional convention to propose a constitution.

Nov. 4, 2025. Ratification referendum for the proposed constitution.

March 31, 2027. If the proposed constitution is ratified, this is the date it would come into effect.

Sources: Bills may be directly tracked at: https://billtracking.legvi.org.

Key Federal Documents

September 17, 1789. The U.S. Constitution included the following vague statement (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2) about admitting new states:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. 

The key rules for admitting new states, including how they must draft their constitutions, have been settled by congressional and court actions. Many key rules are based on precedent rather than clearly stated policies.

July 22, 1954. Congress passes the Organic Act of 1954.  Amended many times since (see the Revised Organic Act of 1954 or here for a more interactive version), this Act has served as USVI’s fundamental law since 1954. It is currently 105 pages long. A Constitution would replace it. An annotated and more accessible version of the Revised Organic Act was published in 2021 by a team of scholars working out of the University of the Virgin Islands.

October 21, 1976. Congress passes Pub.L. 94–584 authorizing the people of the United States Virgin Islands to organize a government pursuant to a constitution. The required mechanism for drafting a constituton is a “constitutional convention.”

The Legislatures of the Virgin Islands and Guam, respectively, are authorized to call constitutional conventions to draft within the existing territorial-Federal relationship, constitutions for the local self-government of the people of the Virgin Islands and Guam.

This law is much vaguer than it might appear from a superficial reading. Notably, the term “constitutional convention” is not clearly defined. In the context of new state formation, it has generally been interpreted to mean a body made up of delegates elected separately from a state’s legislature that proposes a constitution for approval by both Congress and a territory’s electorate.

Other Federal Documents

U.S. Insular Areas: Applicability of Relevant Provisions of the U.S. Constitution, United States General Accounting Office, GAO/HRD-91-18, June 1991.

Unofficial Nominees for Convention Delegates

On Ocr, 8, 2024, the Election System of the Virgin Islands announced three additional candidates, which are write-in candidates. This averted a legal and political crisis because the St. Thomas/St. John District lacked an adequate number of candidates to comply with the enabling act for the convention. See 2024 General Election Write-in Candidates, Press release of the Election System of the Virgin Islands, Oct. 8, 2024.

(click on an image below to expand it so it’s readable)

[Note: Alexander Hamilton lived on St. Croix until 1772, when he was 15 years old. This painting is dated Jan. 11, 1773. For background, see The West Indian Island That Shaped Alexander Hamilton, New York Times, May 3, 2017, and AllThingsHamilton.com]

“It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force…. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good…. Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments….”

–Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #1,
Member of the 1787 U.S. and 1788 New York constitutional conventions.

[Note: Judge Thomas Cooley was widely considered the most prominent legal authority on U.S. state constitutional law during the last half of the 19th Century.]

“The people of the several Territories may form for themselves State constitutions whenever enabling acts for that purpose are passed by Congress, but only in the manner allowed by such enabling acts, and through the action  of such persons as the enabling acts shall clothe with the elective franchise to that end.

–Judge Thomas Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest Upon The Legislative Power of the States of the American Union, 1868, p. 30.

“[I]t is a false constitutionalism, a false statesmanship, to endeavor by the exercise of a perverted ingenuity to seem to give the people full power and at the same time to trick them out of it.

–President Theodore Roosevelt, Charter of democracy speech before the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Feb. 21, 1912.

“The convention would lose a large part of its usefulness, if it were subject to legislative control…. It is clear that [the courts] cannot and will not interfere in the internal affairs of a convention…. [A convention] can hire a hall, choose officers and employees, adopt rules, purchase supplies…. In general, it has all powers necessarily incident to the business delegated to it.”

–Roger Hoar, Constitutional Conventions:
Their Nature, Powers, and Limitations, 1917.

“The important distinction so well understood in America, between a Constitution established by the people and unalterable by the government, and a law established by the government and alterable by the government, seems to have been little understood and less observed in any other country. Wherever the supreme power of legislation has resided, has been supposed to reside also a full power to change the form of the government.” “

–James Madison, Federalist #53, 1788.

“[C]urrent state officials  should not be allowed to sit as delegates, and those who sit as delegates should not be allowed to run for office in the next regular elections.

–Joel I. Colon-Rios, Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic
Legitimacyand the Question of Constituent Power
, 2012, p. 164.

“[D]emocratic legitimacy is not about the procedure that the constitution establishes for law making, but about the procedures it establishes for its own transformation.

–Joel I. Colon-Rios, “The Legitimacy of the Juridical: Constituent Power,
Democracy, and the Limits of Constitutional Reform
,” 2010, p. 214.

Montana’s Future Amendments Clause:
A Model for USVI?

Montana’s Constitution, passed in 1972 via a constitutional convention, is one of America’s most recent. It has some noteworthy features that empower the people, including its future amendments clause. Other constitutions, including foreign constitutions, may also have text that USVI’s convention delegates might want to consider. For Montana, see:

  • Comment by Jim Nelson, a retired Montana Supreme Court justice, The People Win a Big One, The Missoula Current, Feb. 12, 2024.
  • Montana Constitution, Article XIV: Constitutional Revision. A copy of the original signed into law in 1972 can be found here.

An example of using the constitutional initiative to bypass a conflicted legislature can be found here. This Arkansas initiative concerns open government. The constitutional initiative, like the constitutional convention, is supposed to function as a legislative bypass mechanism.

An example of using a citizens’ assembly, a randomly selected group of citizens acting as a constitutional convention, can be found here. This example focuses on Ireland.

USVI Quotes

“This convention is incredibly important for the Virgin Islands because it allows us to address and fix or amend key governance issues such as [whether to elect an attorney general]. By coming together to draft a constitution, we can create a legal framework that truly reflects our needs and values at this time, not the reflections of individuals of the 1950s who may have never even stepped one foot in the Virgin Islands.”

Angel Bolques Jr.,
USVI Senator,
After Voting Against Elected Attorney General Bill, Bolques Says Issue Should Be Addressed By Upcoming Constitutional Convention, The Virgin Islands Consortium, May 16, 2024.

“In a recent session of the 35th Legislature, crowded with honorarium bills, a non-descript amendment referring to some date changes in ‘Act 8681’ was slipped onto a popular measure concerning veteran’s benefits, along with a couple of other unrelated items.

It was so seemingly unimportant Act 8681’s name and purpose weren’t even included on the amendment.

But this rider was anything but innocuous.”

Bernetia Akin,
Constitutional Convention Glides Under Radar Toward 2024 Election, St. Thomas Voice, August 13, 2023.

“[T]he Legislature’s Office of Legal Counsel has issued an opinion saying the Legislature must empower a separate entity and cannot, for example, designate itself or create a committee called the Constitutional Convention. Sen. Jackson, the bill’s sponsor, believes a convention must be elected.”

Janelle Sarauw,
USVI Senator,
Author of 6th Constitutional Convention Enabling Act,
Oct. 28, 2020

“The heart of a democracy is a constitution.… It is time we devise the heart of our democracy. We cannot amend the Organic Act. We can’t delete a section. And it is outdated. With a constitution, we can amend it when we need to.”

Janelle Sarauw,
USVI Senator,
Author of 6th Constitutional Convention Enabling Act,
Oct. 28, 2020