students who are on the fence of this documentary is to really look into your community and see what is affecting those who are around you, because they are the ones you love. they're the ones you see the most. issue that you see happen every day on the street, that is probably where you can start. you want to be a voice for your community. >> thank you for all of your advice. information, go to our website. >> eight week american history tv plus american artifacts visits museums, archives, and historic places. 225 years ago on december 15, 1791, virginia became the 11th

of 14 states to ratify the first-hand amendments to the united states constitution. the bill of rights and became law. amending america is a national archives exhibit marking the anniversary by exploring the amendingnd process of the constitution. this tour of the exhibit is about 45 minutes. nifer: my name is jennifer johnson i am a code -- curator. christine: i am in education and public outreach specialist at the national archives great am also co-curator. >> we are about to take you through "amending america." i next to me is a case showing the more than 11,000 amendments proposed to the constitution. christine and i have been working on this exhibit for a couple years now. the research started almost four years ago. we could not help but notice

that the variety and depth of amendments -- there have been more than 11,000 proposed to the constitution. we started asking ourselves why there have been so many, yet so few actually ratified. the exhibit begins to explore that idea and how the founding fathers set of our government and allowed us to amend when needed. one of our challenges for the was that the bill of rights actually lives in the rotunda, a different area of the museum. we decided as a team to have a banner literally lead visitors from the bill of rights all the way to the o'brien gallery, and on that banner are the more than 11,000. it was a small team of staff and volunteers who worked over the course of last summer to literally transcribe from a variety of government publications into one document amendments. 11,000 the bill of rights is the first

10 amendments. explain how weto got to have a bill of rights in the first place. it wasn't guaranteed we would have one. in fact, at the constitutional convention in 1787 in philadelphia, when the delegates were talking about the bill of rights, they took a vote on whether or not they should include one in the constitution, and this document right here, which is the voting record from the constitutional convention, shows that when they took a vote, this is 2/3 of the way down the page, that the vote was actually 0-10, including the bill of rights and the constitution. the delegates to the constitutional convention just didn't think it was needed with the constitution. but then after the convention was over, the constitution was sent to the state for

ratification, and the states did not agree that it wasn't needed. one of the states that disagreed was new york. this is two pages of the six pages of the fate state of new york ratification of the constitution. what happened in new york and several other states was that they decided to ratify the constitution and to use that as they start of a new governmental system grade when they did it, they also subjected a bunch of amendments that they think should be included in the new constitution. so they were hoping that after the constitution went into effect, that the new representatives to the first congress would use article five of the constitution, which explains how to make an amendment to the constitution, and add new things to it. york, ratification documents right here, here is the beginning of a list of

amendments that new york wanted to see added to the constitution. there are several ones here that found -- sound very familiar to people who have read the bill of rights and are familiar with it, including that no person ought to be put twice in jeopardy of life or limb, that cruel, nor unusual punishment be inflicted, that the people have a right to keep and bear arms. a lot of the words that the state of new york used in their ratification document ended up in the bill of rights. visitors to the gallery come in, one of the first things it's this montage of photos and film clips showing americans actually using their first amendment rights to free exercise of it's this montage of religion, free press, free speech, the right to assemble, and the right to petition their government. over here is one of my favorite

documents in the gallery. it's a draft version of what became the bill of rights. thesually refer to this as senate markup. what you actually see when you look at this document is you see that is 17t amendments as they were passed by the house of representatives. then you see handwritten notations that were made on top of it. and those are the changes, initions, and deletions made the senate as the senate deliberated over these. the senate took the 17 amendments passed by the house and change them into 12 amendments that after a conference committee, it was 12 amendments sent to the state for ratification. ten of those 12 were ratified by the states, and became the first 10 amendments to the constitution, our bill of rights. what is listed here as article the 3rd and 4th are what later

became what we know as the first amendment to the constitution. that includes most of the rights that a lot of people are familiar with. if you look closely at the markings here, and there are a lot of markings here, a lot of ink spilled in the senate over k was clauses, the most in spilled on the clauses that have to do with the free exercise and establishment of religion. after the bill of rights was sent to the state for didfication, many states ratify. and this document here is the ratification from the state of 11th out which was the of the then 14 states to ratify. amendments tohe the constitutionally required bar of 3/4 of the states to ratify. that meant when this document signed, the bill of rights came part of our constitution. this document was signed on december 15, 1791, and signed, s

came part of our that is the date that we now celebrate as bill of rights day. anniversary of this document that we are celebrating this year at the national archives with the exhibit "amending america." one of the best-known rights is the right to petition your government for redress of grievances. this document right here is a really great example of that happening. it represents the fairly typical method by which people did petition their government for most of the 18th and 19th and even into the 20th century. the way they did it is the petitioners would print the text of whatever it is they were advocating for and leave the remainder of the page blank for signatures. they would make multiple copies of this, and they would go out into the countryside to the places where people gather, to the churches and taverns, and collect as many signatures as they could. then, the petition organizers

would gather them all back up together and actually glue each document.rm one giant it was the style of document -- they relate up like a scroll. this is how it would be presented on the floor of the house of representatives or the it was the style ofsenate. we've also given our visitors the opportunity to see what petitioning looks like in the 21st century. here shown ond the we the people website of the obama administration. this is a website set up for people to submit petitions to the white house about whatever topic it is that they want. if that petition gets over 100,000 signatures within 30 days, the administration will respond directly. visitors can our see 18th -- what 18th century petitioning looks like and what 21st century petitioning looks like.

story in the bill of rights is our fifth amendment right to not incriminate ourselves, confirmed by the supreme court derisive -- decision miranda v. arizona, the court affirmed that persons who are arrested have the right to remain silent or not incriminate themselves. and that is where the miranda warning was born. we worked with the history channel to create this montage of clips from different shows and movies of people who were being put under arrest, being read their miranda warning. rounding out the bill of rights theme is this poster that was created during the bicentennial of the constitution. it was something we really like because it gives you a nice, eachvisual illustration of of the amendments, except for the 27th, past one year after this poster with created. we find it to be a wonderful cheat sheet for visitors and staff to really explain and show what each amendment did that was

added to the constitution. moving into what we call the and then was to the right to vote for our citizens. one of our favorite stories here is what we call the widows and spinsters document. amendments are unique in that you need us to stay in consensus before they become successful at being ratified. even when the 19th amend it was ratified in 1920, it wasn't exactly that in 1918 we decided women should have the right to vote. there had been campaigns since the 1840's and even earlier for women's suffrage. this document shows one of those more than 11,000 amendments proposed to the constitution, an that votingl rights for widows and spinsters only, in the suggestion was that married women were represented by their husbands. this did not go very far. eventually for voting rights to

all women was proposed as the 19th amendment in 1920. it was a good illustration for how we try, sometimes many times before we get to the final version of an amendment. this poster also relates to women's suffrage. this is an image of victoria woodhall as the first woman to address the house judiciary committee, and she did go to advocate for women's suffrage. she said, and other suffragettes at the time, made the same argument, that the 14th amendment gave women the right to vote because it guaranteed that they were citizens, and she made the argument that voting is a right of citizenship, therefore the 14th amendment granted that right to vote to women. and theately for her rest of women, the house judiciary committee did not buy that argument. the petition was tabled and nothing further happened at that

time. section right over here in the section called "the vote" is about one of the amendments it was proposed to expand voting rights that failed. themugh there are five of to the constitution that have expanded voting rights, in 1978, the congress proposed by a 2/3 vote of both houses a new constitutional amendment that would have given the residents of the district of columbia the right to vote. d.c. residents don't have that right because as residents of a federal district, they do not have representation in congress the way a state does, with two senators and representatives according to the population. this amendment congress proposed in 1970 would have changed that and made the district of columbia to be treated as a state for the purpose of representation in congress. although the amendment passed the first part of the amending proposedmeaning it was

by a vote of 2/3 of both houses of congress, it did fail the second part of the amendment process, which is that proposed by a vote of 3/4 of the states have to ratify it. only 16 states out of the required 38 ratified the district of columbia voting rights before it's time expired. duringy the major issue that debate was the fast stat, that residents of the district of columbia pay federal taxes but because they don't have a vote in congress, they don't have any say in how that money is spent. another amendment expanding voting was expanding voting to 18-year-olds. it was born in world war ii but did not get enough traction until the vietnam war, where 18-year-olds being drafted to go to vietnam became a huge divisive part of that war.

amendment is the amendment that was ratified the quickest or in the shortest amount of time. one thing to note is -- in the amendment process, the president has no role. it is a matter between congress and the states ratifying it. however, president nixon decided to ceremoniously sign it anyway in addition to writing -- inviting 318-year-olds to participate in the signing of threeendments -- 18-year-olds to participate in the signing of the amendments. [applause] the cartoon of stewart kind of shows the sentiment but especially men who are being drafted off to war felt they were not yet 21, how they felt on this issue. amendments that

got closest to testing and did not quite make it, congress proposed 33 amendments. the state ratified 27 of those. up of those which has taken quite a bit of those 11,000, has anan 1100 times amendment for equal rights for men and women didn't proposed in congress, is the era. the era was probably closest to being ratified at 35 of 38 states ratifying it before its deadline came to be. this case is devoted to telling a little bit of that story, with two letters and some photos working through its process in the 1970's. pro-era letter here, from liz carpenter, and aid -- an aide to lady bird johnson, and later became a major player in the pro-era movement. she explains the main reasons

why people supported it, including equal pay for equal work was one of the main arguments that women made. this other letter is another one of my favorites in the gallery, from a woman who we don't know anything about. it's a citizen writing to her congress. she uses extraordinary language to its plain her opposition e to thera, and -- to the era, congr. she uses extraordinary language to and takes the point of view of a isditional homemaker who interested in maintaining the position of women in the home. she expresses a bit of wonderment as to why any woman would want to work outside of the home, because she says that men's jobs are just not that interesting.women in the home this is the 14th amendment to the constitution, and it plays a really significant role in the history not only of our country,

but especially in the history of the bill of rights. the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868, three years after the end of the civil war, and its main purpose was to protect the newly freed salves -- slaves from states that would try to takeinteresting. equality, their citizenship, and their freedom. so the 14th amendment had a number of important clauses, including the clause that talks about the equal protection of the laws assigned to all persons. it defines anyone born in the united states as a citizen, and guarantees the due process for every citizen, meaning that every person has a right to a fair trial. but it wasn't until the 20th century that the due process clause began to be interpreted by the supreme court to apply statell of rights to the

government as well. when the bill of rights was first written, it only prevented the federal government from abusing those rights. the first amendment starts, congress shall make no law. state government asthose protections'o state government. states coudl abridge -- could abridge freedom of speech or religion. century,in the 20th the supreme court began applying the due process clause of the to all thoset rights in the bill of rights, and said that in order for those rights to be protected, the states had to protect them as well. and this process was referred to in corporations. because of the incorporation of the bill of rights to the states, those rights are truly protected for all americans today. this 14th amendment is what we call the enrolled version or the

final signed version that represents the legal, final version of the text. it is bound in this book with the other joint resolutions passed by congress at the same time great it was listed chronologically as they will pass. there are other versions of the 14th amendment and all the amendments in our records here at the national archives, but especially in the records of congress and the house and senate. but this version of the bill of version, the official and we wanted to put this on display even though it takes up this giant case in the gallery, because of the importance of the 14th amendment both to the nation as a whole and to the bill of rights. said,er: as christine there are many drafts of amendments. what we call the first 13th amendment is on display. it is also one of the six that got closest to being ratified, or at least congress

proposed it, but the states did not ratify it. it was proposed -- and propose something vastly different from what we know as 30 13th amendment, which abolished slavery. the amendment would have enshrined slavery in the constitution. towas a last ditch effort save the union as the civil war was brewing. to the states, the civil war had already begun. it never actually reached any threshold for ratification. this is a joint resolution, meaning both houses of congress voted on it and got the 2/3 margin of approval. allowing visitors to understand it is a high bar for ratification, we really want it visitors to understand how we can amend and why. is told in this series of graphics here, article 5, on the fourth page of the constitution, spelled out the outline for how an amendment can

be ratified. it is a two-part process. 2/3 of both houses of congress it, andvote and approve then he goes to the states, need 3/4 of the states to ratify it or added to the constitution. one citizen, ratified by 3/4 of the state, modern amendments have come to the national archives to be certified need 3d therefore officially noting it is part of the constitution. this is a transcription of visitors can read exactly what it says. it lays out the general guidelines for that process. we also think it's very important for visitors to understand that the founding explicitave us this mechanism because they wanted us to be able to change the constitution through votes and not war. oven to this point, -- up to th is point, the red never been anything like this. it involved a revolution or war or violence to change the

constitution. the founding fathers wanted a peaceful way, and also knew they could not have predicted what the government would have needed a protect the citizens, or as country matured, they knew that future generations might need to tinker a little bit with the constitution. they wanted to have that mechanism. one thing that's interesting is that they wanted to amend everything. almost everything. there are only two things they list in article 5 they cannot be touched. over here, we explain that a little bit. when the commonly known that no amendment could be propose that would prohibit the implication till 1808.en the commonly the issue of slavery divided the founding fathers. they never really into a solution, but they did compromise in some ways on that. we would have equal representation in the senate. two members from every state would go to the senate to represent that state.

maybe one day will be 4 or 8 members, till 1808. but the outline specifically that would not be something they could tinker with. we also explained that there is a second method for proposing amendments as well as ratifying. those methods have been used very rarely are not at all. the first in proposing has never been used or has been successful, and that is where 3/4 of state legislatures would submit a petition to congress to call the constitutional convention. we've used the conventional method for ratifying once before, the 21st amendment which repealed prohibition. understood that is kind of confusing, amendments versus laws, what do those mean. we have these graphicssus laws, what do those mean. we have these graphics here to explain the laws, you need a simpler majority or it's much easier to pass a law and therefore pass a new law to engage the other law.

hand,ents on the other the process is a two-step process which involves quite a bit of consensus, both in congress and throughout the states. again, with the amending -- with the article 5 which allows us to amend, the founding fathers really were striving for a balance of flexibility, but also stability. it's very hard to ratify and amendment. it's very easy to put an idea on the table to congress, as the more than 11,000 show us and only 27 made it all the way to the final part of the process. so, we wanted visitors to walk away understanding that while it is possible to founding fathers made it difficult in terms of getting something added to the constitution. theme of our gallery is called refining powers. all the amendments in this section of the gallery reflect in some way amendments that either tried to give new powers to the federal government or in

some cases, actually take them away. all of these documents in this section have something to do with what powers the government is allowed to exercise. is fromt one over here 1938, which is after world war i and during the great depression, but before world war ii actually started, but over in europe it looked like there was going to be a war, but many americans did not want to participate. this is actually a petition in favor of an amendment that has been introduced in congress that would take away a power from congress. of the i, section 8 constitution gives the power to declare war. this proposed amendment would say that if congress did declare war, it could not go into effect until after that war resolution

had been voted on in a national referendum. that was definitely an attempt to try to get the people's voice in there. although they did get a lot of support for this here, they didn't have enough support to actually get back into the constitution. over here we have another perennial issue related to amending. the balanced budget amendment is reviewed in been congress. probably for the last 40 years or so it has been a regular events. we included this video here of ronald reagan's 1988 state of the union address. in it he talks about and probably for the last 40 years or so it hasadvocates for the pa balanced budget and amendment. >> this is the conference report. weighing 14eport, pounds. [laughter]

let us do now what so many states due to hold down spending, and what 32 state legislatures have asked us to do. of ans, heed the wishes overwhelming plurality of americans and pass a constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced budget and forces the federal government to live with it. [applause] another amendment i came across in my research that i didn't know any about until researching for this exhibit, it is often referred to as a christian amendments. this is a type of amendment that was first introduced in congress in the 1840's, and was introduced as recently as this one here from 1923. the idea behind this is that it would amend the preamble of our constitution to place the primary authority for that document rather than a week, he would place the authority --

this one's a -- the laws of jesus christ, the savior and king of nations. time periods,ent that wording should base on the denomination, the church that was radiant and support it. -- writing and to support it. the idea if the constitution was not created explicitly as a christian document, so they wanted to amend the constitution in this way to ensure that it was. surfacedr story that in the 11,000 as we were researching them was the effort to actually, five years after the repeal of prohibition, the d the salement banne and manufacture of alcohol. that, it wasafter

proposed in congress that instead of banning the sale and manufacture of alcohol, we would prohibit drunkenness and regulate human behavior in that way. the absurdity of this idea was particularly pointed out in the handwritten note at the bottom, and i will read. it says, why not add, section three, that period of time commonly known as saturday night is hereby stricken from the calendar of the united states and abolished. section 4, congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to change human nature from time to time, in its or their discretion. this one did not go very far. i think at this point, citizens realize the prohibition had failed. of only for the sake regulating behavior, but also for very real issues, as this cartoon explains, nonregulated manufacture of alcohol sometimes produced very harmful or poisonous liquor, without government oversight,

bootlegging became a health issue as well. this was an amendment proposed in the house, and this is the formal submittal of that amendments. and tried to find out who wrote that. we don't know if it was a clerk or another legislator. we are not sure. but it was added to it after the formal submittal of the document. the child labor amendment proposed by congress in 1924 was another one of these six amendments that was proposed by congress, but not ratified by the states. this letter right here shows the feelings that this one woman had, that she felt strongly enough about to write to her member of congress. she had seen some small children who were working, and working so hard that they couldn't even play because they had no energy left after working. she wrote this letter to her member of congress to explain

why she wanted to support regulation of child labor. then she added this note at the bottom of it that ties together two of the great amending issues of the progressive era, at the beginning of the 20th century. and after she signed her name, she wrote, one woman who wants the ballot for the purpose of little these helpless ones. in doing so, she showed how many of the amending issues are often tied together and are occurring at the same time. in this case, the move towards regulation of child labor was also tied very closely with getting women the right to vote so they could help in those ways. this document is an interesting one that relates to polygamy, which was actually a really big amending issue at the end of the 19th century, when the state of utah, which had a significant the state ofmons,

utah was trying to become a state. and many of those mormons did participate in polygamy. and there was other people throughout the country who did not want utah to become a state if they engaged in that activity. there was a bunch of pushback against that effort to become a state. in response to that, this document was created. defense of plural marriage by the women of utah county. they wrote this long document, we can only show one page here. it's about 7 or 8 pages long -- long. they explained that polygamy is a divine directive, and they will stand firm in their unalterable faith in plural marriage as a divine ordinance. moving on to the next scene, the shape of our government. the stories explore how the structure of our government really affects how it works. a great example of that is our

25th amendment. actually,s 1841, william harrison was our first president to die in office. and the actual constitution inds that the vice president would assume the role of presidency. however, the constitution is silent on pretty much everything else after that. so congress wasn't really sure what the vice president john tyler was to be called. was he president? was he acting president? what did all of this mean? it's a question that lingered on until the late half of the 20th century. it wasn't until john f. kennedy was assassinated, and lyndon b. johnson stepped up to become president, that enough support with galvanized to really answer this. over the course of that time, from 1841 to the 25th amendment was ratified, the years where we had no vice president, you would get to 38 years.

so, the 25th amendment was ratified, and seeing goodness because it wasn't long after that we now have president nixon and vice president spiro agnew. agnew resigned. amendment toe appointed vice president. he ends up appointing gerald ford. a year later, president and resigned. -- nixon resigned. now he uses the 25th amendment to appoint his own vp. the 25th amendment had not existed, we would have a huge political crisis on our hands. we would not have somebody representing the presidency was voted by a majority of the country. he would have been somebody voted by a very small majority of the states. the 25th amendment finally resolved a big question mark the constitution did not answer at the time. this is a motion to amend the asolution to strike out

president and insert vice presidents now exercising the office of president. this is what was submitted after william harrison, president harrison died in office. vice president john taylor took office. this is a photo of lyndon b. johnson aboard air force one taking the oath of office to become president of the united states. here is a really interesting letter that delves more into the intricacies of what president nixon was doing, where he asked gerald ford to recommend three people on who he thought should be his vice president. so gerald ford gives him 4 choices, which you can see here. as we know, president nixon ended up picking ford anyway. this petition to congress was 68, right at the beginning of the impeachment trial of andrew johnson if you years after the end of the civil war. that came when president johnson

y disagreements with the congress about how to reconstruct the country after the end of the civil war. that disagreement led to a big rift in the country. johnson was so unpopular at the time that he not only was impeached, he was acquitted by one vote, so he wasn't removed from office. but he was impeached. these people wrote into congress to say that we could just abolish the presidency altogether so that we wouldn't have to deal with anyone ever again the likes of andrew johnson. this document here has to do with an amendment introduced by a senator in 1971. her proposed amendment addressed what she saw as problems in the with people who were not reporting to work. she proposed an amendment to the constitution that would expel

any member of congress who was absent for more than 40% of their rollcall votes. senthis was a petition into the senate subcommittee on constitutional amendments to advocate in favor of the amendment. not surprisingly, the other members of congress who might be expelled under this amendment did not vote for it, and it did not pass. we decided to include this document here at the gallery, because it shows how a specific to a directly link constitutional amendment. in this case, the 12th amendment or i. most people don't know anything about the 12th amendment because it did such a good job of solving the targeted problem that we haven't really needed to know anything else about it. and ited the problem

never happened again. you can see the problem pretty clearly you look at this. this is the electoral college vote tally for the 1800 presidential election. very quickly, you see here, the vote in the election was a tie vote. 73-73. between the two candidates of the democratic republican party, thomas jefferson, virginia, and aaron burr of new york. the reason why this happened in because the candidates ran for this election differently than they have for any previous election. the electoral college system that the founders created when they wrote the constitution, they thought it would work such that the candidates would all be running for president, whoever came in first place would become the president, and whoever got the second-place vote in the electoral college would become the vice president. that worked fine when everybody

voted for george washington in the first 2 elections, and it worked ok for john adams. in the 1800 presidential election, it didn't work very well at all. the difference was that the candidates in this election ran for the first time as a party ticket. thomas jefferson, ehrenberg ran together -- aaron burr ran together as the vice presidential candidate. when it came -- when it came time for the electoral college to vote, each electorate gets 2 votes. as such.ey voted they cast one ballot for thomas jefferson and the other ballot for his running mate, ehrenberg -- aaron burr, which resulted in a tight vote. -- tied vote. the election wasn't revolved -- resolved until after 36 hours. realized after this election with this tied vote,

that would continue to keep happening, if candidates ran as a party ticket. so, just in time for the next the 12thin 1804, amendment to the constitution was ratified. littleked the voting a bit in the electoral college so that each elector had to specify which of their votes was for president and which of their votes was for vice president. in doing so, the insured there would not be a tied vote again and this would not happen, and that has worked. dent is elected is probably one of the most common topics of proposed amendments to the constitution. this one is one that would s abolish the electoral college system altogether and replace it with a direct vote. takes at one over here

much more interesting way of addressing that issue. clearly the electoral college was not liked by most people. this proposed amendment, introduced in the house in 1846, would have gotten rid of the electoral college, but would have instead called for us to choose the president of the united states by luck, by picking a ball out of an urn that represents a candidate, and that would lead to a presidency. the person who introduced this amendment did not give a speech in congress, so we can't say with certainty what his goal was in doing this, but based on the research about this member of congress and the time period, we think this was a deliberate effort to randomize the presidency, in a time -- right before the civil war when the nation was breaking up into

, those that favored slavery and those that favored abolition. if the, those president of the d states was randomly picked, then either the slave nor free states could say that they won and there was support for their agenda. if we had chosen the president this way in 1846, perhaps the civil war would not have happened, police not when it did. it may have delayed it. here in the gallery we also decided to take a little bit longer look at the sort of absurdity behind this idea of selecting a president by picking a ball. we asked, what would happen if we did in fact elect the president of the united states by lot today? we made a little container here, and we have the balls in it marked by the states. -- we worked with

googledo find the most person from each state, and we use that as our stand-in for who might be the most popular person who might be chosen as president of the united states if we did pick a ball out of a bowl to choose our president. national archives plays a role in the amending process as well, and we still got to this document right over here. after an amendment has been proposed by 2/3 vote of both houses and then also ratified by those the states, ratification documents get sent to the national archives, and the argument of the united states certifies that the amendment has concluded the constitutional amending process, and he certifies that that amendment is now part of the constitution. this is the certification

document of the 27th and most recent amendment to the constitution, which was ratified .n 1992 and we have a photograph right here as well of the archivists of the united states finding that ratification document. in addition to the certification , all of the state ratifications of amendments are stored here at the national archives, and all kinds of other federal records that show how the amendment came to be, and also how the amendment was implemented afterwards. all of those are federal records stored here at the national archives. for a final interaction that visitors can choose to participate in, we have created a poll where we are asking visitors to submit their own vote on what can be our next amendment. we have 27 amendments to the constitution currently, and

congress every day is proposing new ones. and so we have put a multiple-choice selection of that visitors can choose answers fory text their opinions to the poll, and it's a real time poll, so visitors will get to see their vote be added to the results. we also included an animated video in our exhibit here to explain the process of how an idea becomes an amendment. this is a really cute little animation we created in partnership with the history channel that explains the congressprocess of proposing an amendment, and s tates ratifying it. this video is available on youtube for anybody to see and use as well. >> so, how exactly does the constitution get amended? >> when an idea has enough popular support, women ought to

have the right to vote, for member ofe, a congress brings it to the floor of the house or senate. it is then assigned a committee for debate and refinement. if it makes it out of committee, the whole chamber debates. if 2/3 of members vote for it, it passes. then it becomes an amendment? no, it goes to the other chamber and repeats the process. any difeferences are worked out in a conference committee, and then each chamber votes again. >> oh, brother. >> ♪ or sister ♪ >> if it passes congress, the national archives than copies -- since copies to each state. if 3/4 of states send back the archivists of

the united states certified proper ratification, and the constitution is amended. learn more about this exhibit and the constitution by archives.gov/amending -america. you can download a free e-book companion to the exhibit. archives.gov/amending -america. >> all weekend long, american history tv is joining our communications cable partners to showcase the history of scottsdale, arizona. to learn more about the cities on our current tour, visit c-span.org/citiestour. we continue now with our look at the history of scottsdale.