these are things they can relate to. you can pull them into it with these stories of human folly, not faces youngs, see on dollar bills or something. people you have a hard time relating to. these are stories they could relate to. this weekend, we are featuring the history of scottsdale, arizona. together with our cable partners. learn more about scottsdale and other stops at c-span.org/ citiestour. watching american history all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. >> each week, american history

tv visits museums, archives, and historic places. 225 years ago on december 15, 1791, virginia became the 11th of 14 states to ratify the first 10 amendments to the u.s. constitution. the bill of rights then became law. "amending america" is a national archives exhibit marking the anniversary by exploring the history and process of amending the constitution. this tour of the exhibit is about 45 minutes. jennifer: my name is jennifer johnson i am a co-curator. christine: i am an education and public outreach specialist at the national archives. i am also co-curator. jennifer: we are standing outside the gallery about to take you through "amending america." 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 of years now. the research started almost four

years ago. we could not help but notice that the variety and depth of amendments in the stacks and we realized 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 up our government and allowed us to amend when needed. one of our challenges for the exhibit 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 amendments proposed in congress. 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 the more than 11,000 amendments.

christine: the bill of rights is the first 10 amendments. we decided to open the gallery with those first 10 amendments, which are collectively known as the bill of rights. we also wanted to explain how we 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 on including the bill of rights in 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 states for ratification, and the states did not agree that it wasn't needed. one of the states that disagreed was the state of new york. this is two pages of the six pages of the 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 the start of a new governmental system. but when they did it, they also suggested 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.

in new york's 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 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. when our visitors to the gallery come in, one of the first things they will see is this montage of photos and film clips showing americans actually using their first amendment rights to free exercise 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. we usually refer to this as the senate markup. what you actually see when you look at this document is you see printed text that is 17 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, additions, and deletions made in the senate as the senate deliberated over these. the senate took the 17 amendments passed by the house unchanged -- and changed them into 12 amendments that after a conference committee, it was 12 amendments sent to the state for ratification. 10 of those were ratified by the 12 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 these clauses, the most ink was 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 states for ratification, many states did ratify. and this document here is the ratification from the state of virginia, which was the 11th out of the then 14 states to ratify. that brought the amendments to the constitutionally required bar of 3/4 of the states to ratify. that meant when this document was signed, the bill of rights became part of our constitution. this document was signed on

december 15, 1791, and that is the date that we now celebrate as bill of rights day. it's the 225th 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 page to form one giant document. it was the style of document -- they roll it up like a scroll. this is how it would be presented on the floor of the house of representatives or the senate. we've also given our visitors the opportunity to see what petitioning looks like in the 21st century. we have an ipad here shown on the "we the people" website of the obama administration. this is a website set up for people to submit petitions directly 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. right here, our visitors can see what 18th century petitioning

looks like and what 21st century petitioning looks like. another story in the bill of rights is our fifth amendment right to not incriminate ourselves, confirmed by the supreme court 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, think -- suso

ccinct visual illustration of each 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 vote, by amendments to the constitution have expanded 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 a sustained consensus before they become successful at being ratified. even when the 19th amendment 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, it was an 1888 proposal that voting rights for widows and spinsters only.

the suggestion was that married women were represented by their husbands. this did not go very far. eventually, full 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. unfortunately for her and the rest of women, the house judiciary committee did not buy

that argument. the petition was tabled and nothing further happened at that time. this next section right over here in the section called "the vote" is about one of the armaments -- amendments proposed to expand voting rights that failed. although there are five amendments 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 would have changed that and 1978 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 process, meaning it was proposed by a vote of 2/3 of both houses of congress, it did fail the second part of the amendment process, which is that 3/4 of the states have to ratify it. as it turned out, only 16 states out of the required 38 ratified the district of columbia voting rights amendment before it's time expired. probably the major issue during that debate was the fact that, as this cartoon shows, 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 lowering the voting age 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. the 26th 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 inviting three s to participate in the signing of the amendments -- . [cheers and applause] >> the cartoon next to it kind of explains or shows the sentiment that especially men

who are being drafted off to war felt if they were not yet 21, how they felt on this issue. one of the six amendments that the closest the passing and did not quite make it, congress proposed 33 amendments. the state ratified 27 of those. one of those which has taken up quite a bit of those 11,000, more than 1100 times has an amendment for equal rights for men and women been proposed in congress, is the era. the era was probably closest to being ratified at 35 of 38 states having ratified 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. this one is a pro-era letter here, from liz carpenter, and 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 is just a citizen writing to her member of congress. but she uses extraordinary language to explain her opposition to the era, and takes the point of view of a traditional homemaker who is 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. 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 slaves from states that would try to take away their 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 applying to all persons. it defines anyone born in the united states as a citizen, and it also guarantees the due process of law 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 the bill of rights to the state

governments as well. when the bill of rights was first written, it only prevented the federal government from abridging those rights. the first amendment starts, congress shall make no law. those protections did not apply to state governments. states could abridge freedom of speech or religion. just not the federal government. starting in the 20th century, the supreme court began applying the due process clause of the 14th amendment to all those 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 as incorporations. it is 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. it is listed chronologically as they were passed. 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 rights is the official version, 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. jennifer: as christine said, 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 proposed something vastly different from what we know as the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery. the amendment would have enshrined slavery in the constitution. it was proposed as a very last ditch effort to save the union as the civil war was brewing. once it went 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 proposed it and voted on it and got the 2/3 margin of approval. beyond allowing visitors to understand it is a high bar for ratification, we really wanted visitors to understand how we can amend and why. and that 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 have to vote and approve it, and then it is sent to the states, where we need 3/4 of the states to ratify it or add it to the constitution. modern amendments have come to the national archives to be certified, officially noting it is part of the constitution. this is a transcription of article five so visitors can read exactly what it says. it lays out the broad or general guidelines for that process. we also think it's very important for visitors to understand that the founding fathers gave us this explicit mechanism because they wanted us to be able to change the constitution through votes and not war. up to this point, there had never been something 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 to protect the citizens, or as a country matured, they knew that future generations might need to tinker a little bit with the constitution. they wanted us to have that mechanism. one thing that's interesting is , did they want us to amend everything? almost everything. there are only two things they that cannotcle five be touched. over here, we explain that a little bit. when they signed the constitution, they noted that no amendment could be propose that would prohibit the implication of slaves till 1808. the issue of slavery divided the founding fathers. they never really came to a solution, but they did compromise in some ways on that. and also 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, but they outlined 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. both methods have been used very rarely or 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 with the 21st amendment which repealed prohibition. we also understood that it is kind of confusing, amendments versus 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 negate the other law. amendments on the other hand, 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 in 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, the founding fathers made it difficult in terms of getting something added to the constitution. the second 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. the first one over here is from 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 that 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. article i, section 8 of the 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 that into the constitution. over here we have another perennial issue related to amending. the balanced budget amendment is one that has been introduced repeatedly in congress. probably for the last 40 years or so, it has been a regular event. we include this video here of ronald reagan's 1988 state of the union address. in it he talks about and advocates for the passage of a balance budget amendment. president reagan: this is the conference report. 1053 pages report, weighing 14

pounds. [laughter] president reagan: let us do now what so many states due to hold down spending, and what 32 state legislatures have asked us to do. that is, heed the wishes of an overwhelming plurality of americans and pass a constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced budget and forces the federal government to live within its means. [applause] >> another amendment i came across in my research that i didn't know any about until researching for this exhibit, it is what is often referred to as the christian amendment. 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 in we the --ple, it would replace place the authority -- this one says -- the laws of jesus christ, the savior and king of nations. at different time periods, that wording would change. the idea was 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. >> another story that surfaced in the 11,000 as we were researching them was the effort to actually, five years after the repeal of prohibition, the 18th amendment banned the sale and manufacture of alcohol. the 21st amendment repealed that were negated the 18th amendment.

five years after that, it was 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 cheekily 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 realized prohibition had failed. not only for the sake of 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 document was an amendment proposed in the house, and this is the formal submittal of that amendment. we have tried 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. but 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 helping these helpless little 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 number of mormons, the state of 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. it says defense of plural , marriage by the women of utah county. they wrote this long document, we can only show one page here. it is about seven or eight pages long in which 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. as early as 1841, actually, william harrison was our first president to die in office. and the constitution indicates 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 exactly 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 was 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 where we had no vice president. so, the 25th amendment was ratified. and thank goodness because it , wasn't long after that we now have president nixon and vice president spiro agnew. agnew resigned. president nixon uses the amendment to appoint a vice president. he ends up appointing gerald ford. presidentr later, nixon resigned. now he uses the 25th amendment to appoint his own vp. however, if the 25th amendment had not existed, we would have a huge political crisis on our hands. we would not have somebody representing the presidency who was voted by a majority of the country. it 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

resolution to strike out a president and insert vice president now exercising the office of president. this is what was submitted after william harrison, president harrison died in office. and 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. gerald ford does list, he gives him four choices which you can , see here. as we know, president nixon ended up picking ford anyway. >> this petition to congress was sent in in 1868, right at the beginning of the impeachment trial of andrew johnson a few

years after the end of the civil war. that came when president johnson had many, many 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. and these people wrote into congress to say that we could -- should 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 senator margaret chase smith in 1971. her proposed amendment addressed what she saw as problems in the senate 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. and this was a petition sent 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 in the gallery because it shows how a specific to a directly led constitutional amendment. in this case, the 12th amendment. it also shows 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. it solved the problem and it 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 1800 was because the candidates ran for this election differently than they had 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 two elections, and it worked ok for john adams. but 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 and aaron burr ran together as the presidential and vice presidential candidate. when it came time for the electoral college to vote, each electorate gets 2 votes. and so they voted as such. they cast one ballot for thomas jefferson and the other ballot for his running mate, aaron burr, which resulted in a tight vote. -- tied vote. the election wasn't revolved -- resolved until after 36 ballots.

they realized after this election with this tied vote, that would continue to keep happening if candidates ran as a party ticket. they would keep tying like that. so, just in time for the next election in 1804, the 12th amendment to the constitution was ratified. it just tweaked the voting a little 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, they ensured there would not be a tie vote again and this would not happen, and that has worked. how the president is elected is probably one of the most common topics of proposed amendments to the constitution. this one is one that would simply abolish the electoral college system altogether and replace it with a direct vote.

this next one over here takes a 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 is who our president would be. so, 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 sections, those that favored slavery and those that favored abolition. if the president of the united states was randomly picked, then neither 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, at least 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. [laughter] we worked with google to find the most googled person from each state. and we used 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. the national archives plays a role in the amending process as well, and we show that through this document right over here. after an amendment has been proposed by 2/3 vote of both houses and then also ratified by 3/4 of the states, those ratification documents get sent to the national archives. and the archivist 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 in 1992. and we have a photograph right here as well of the archivists signingnited states 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 answers for visitors to simply text their opinions to the poll, and it is 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 two-part process of congress proposing an amendment, and then states 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 enough time, a member of 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, before 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 differences are worked out in a conference committee, and then each chamber votes again. >> oh, brother. >> ♪ or sister ♪ >> if it passes congress, the national archives then copies to each state. if 3/4 of states send back

ratification, the archivist of the united states certifies proper ratification, and the constitution is amended. >> you can learn more about this exhibit and the constitution by visiting archives.gov/amending-america. or you can download a free e-book companion to the exhibit. >> follow the transition of government on c-span as president-elect donald trump selects his cabinet and the republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress. we will take you to key events as they happen without interruption. watch live on c-span. watch on-demand at c-span. org or listen on our free radio