Over at Prairie State Blue, diarist Willinois has posted a dispatch from a Lincoln Land Community College discussion about the possibility of a state constitutional convention (an issue I explored in a recent feature). At the event, John Alexander, a delegate to the 1970 Illinois convention, laid out some of the more sympathetic arguments in favor of Con-Con, as Willinois recounts:

I won't try to transcribe what he [Alexander] said but there are a few points that stuck out for me. He described the legislative redistricting provision as an example of creating a new problem when they were trying to do the right thing by solving an old one. In 1970 he felt that the leaders would be too afraid to allow redistricting to be decided by a tie-breaker coin toss. Instead, districts are routinely gerrymandered by one party after a coin toss.

Alexander feels that the amendatory veto power is routinely abused by multiple Governors. For example, Blagojevich's recent plan to give free mass transit rides to senior citizens was done by amendatory veto. That reverses the legislative process in which bills are supposed to originate with the legislature and goes beyond the intended purpose of making minor changes with the veto.

However, this point seems off-base:

Only a few sitting legislators were part of the last convention and they'll likely have a hard time getting elected to the new Con-Con. The uncertainty of dealing with unfamiliar faces is one reason why many interest groups are opposed.

Sure, the delegate pool might not include actual lawmakers, but there are still going to be plenty of entrenched interests with a hand in the process. University of Illinois-Springfield political studies professor Kent Redfield estimates that because the convention system will not be insulated from political committees, interest groups, and the legislative leaders themselves, it could cost a potential delegate around $200,000 to run, which means your run-of-the-mill citizen is not likely to be involved. Couple that with Article 14 of the current constitution -- stipulating that the state legislature sets all the rules for the convention -- and the idea of a purely democratic procedure starts to fade.