Why Not Repeal the 17th Amendment?

[iamjoy]

OK, supposedly it is supported by a lot of tea baggers and that alone makes me suspicious. It seems their main reason is that if state legislatures rather than the voters chose senators, the senators would be accountable to the legislature and we wouldn't have such a powerful centralized government.

The advantage I see is this:
Let's use Indiana as an example, because population wise, it's probably about average with a population of around 6,400,000. Now we know not all of those people are eligible for, much less registered to vote. Some statistics I've seen indicate about 65% are registered to vote, so let's say Indiana has about 4.1 million voters (I'm rounding down here). That means to be elected Senator in Indiana, a candidate must reach over 4 million people. That takes a lot of money, meaning the would be senator is either very wealthy or taking money from people (and interests) that are. The latter is more likely. So, when this Senator gets to Washington, he (or she) is thinking about the powerful and monied special interests that put him (or her) there.

Meanwhile, Indiana has 100 representatives in its state house. That means on average, each would-be legislator must reach only 10% of the voters a senate hopeful must. Although state house races have started getting very costly and the special interests have bought their way to those candidates too, it is not as extensive. Of course, the problem also is that a lot of people don't pay attention to these local races. Maybe if voters knew their legislator would appoint their senator, they would.

I admit, the way districts are gerrymandered in most states makes most elections a joke, but if a compromise for more fairly drawn districts could be implemented, would changing the way Senators are elected be a horrible thing?

I do sense that many in Washington (of both parties) are out of touch with voters, although I'm suspicious of candidates who campaign on how they aren't like that. I'm concerned about the influence of special interests because I believe they are robbing us of our democracy. But, I don't necessarily believe it is because elected officials are bad people, rather, what they have to do to win a campaign makes them susceptible to special interests. Maybe it was easier for the people to have a say when a Congressional District was one tenth the size of what it is now.

Mind you, I'm not endorsing this. I'm not trying to start any kind of flame war, just open what I hope is an interesting discussion.

Off to go phone bank for the Senate race.

[littlewolf]

1. K & R

I could work with this ....

[Ozymanithrax]

2. Changing our House of Lords to a representative body was one of the better amendments...

after 13th and 14th.

The founding fathers had a deep and abiding mistrust of the unwashed masses. Originally, they only allowed property owning men to vote, and made the Senate a body of insiders who were beholden only to the Legislatures.

Going back is a bad idea.

[Warpy]

3. The original purpose of the Senate

was to act as a check against any legislation that was unfavorable to a state as a separate entity. It became apparent early on that it was, indeed, functioning as a House of Lords, a gaggle of political insiders and rich power brokers who were there to thwart the will of the people through their representatives in the House. That's the reason the Seventeenth was enacted, in the hope that people would be wise enough to throw out the corrupt SOBs who were getting in their way in order to fatten themselves and their rich patrons.

That it hasn't happened is the fault of the people, not the amendment. That the Senate has lost its original purpose is the fault of the type of man or woman who is proposed to run for it.

Personally, I'd like to see the Senate's function scaled back when it comes to domestic legislation, to see it have to prove that such legislation would adversely affect a state or states before it could be voted on. I'd also like to see an abolition of the filibuster in times of national emergency or when more than 100 bills were being held up because some prima donna was threatening to filibuster.

Leaving it like it is, with one sour out of power Senator like DeMint able to shut things down by blowing a hissy fit is simply unacceptable. Something has to be done, but abolishing the 17th amendment is not it.

[PBS Poll-435]

4. Even though I have two useless Republican Senators in my State

I wouldn't trust the Legislature here in Texas to do anything.

[NYC Liberal]

5. The reason for the 17th amendment is not because

having people vote for their state representatives who then elect the Senators to the US Congress isn't a good idea in theory.

It's because:

(a) when state legislatures elected senators, a lot of legislators just ended up voting for themselves and you had long deadlocks where the state would have only one senator in Congress (for several years sometimes),
(b) it's easier to influence a few people in the legislature than it is to sway a statewide election, and
(c) all the campaigning was done in the form of back room dealing between people who wanted to be elected senator and the legislators. If you got rid of the 17th Amendment, you wouldn't have public debates or speeches or really any interaction with the public, because the public wouldn't be the voters, the state legislature would.

[iamjoy]

8. Not Necessarily

Didn't Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate in the 1858 Illinois Senate race?

[NYC Liberal]

11. That was an exception, and people watched them more for

entertainment (they went back and forth with plenty of ad hominems ;)) since they couldn't vote in the election.

[LostInAnomie]

6. Why would I want a Republican dominated legislature to have the final say...

... over who goes on to represent my state?

That's why Repukes have a boner for repealing the 17th amendment. They are tired of having stray Dems win elections in red states.

[iamjoy]

10. That Works Both Ways

What if it was a Democratic legislature having its say?

[LostInAnomie]

13. That's where you have to look at who is actually pushing for it.

Do you think the Teabaggers would be pushing for something like this if they didn't see it was in their advantage. Just off-hand I can think of about 4 states with Dem senators that would be go Repuke with the change. There are also a lot of states that are considered solidly blue when it comes to national politics that have Republican controlled legislatures.

It's a colossally bad idea on a lot of levels. It all comes around to the fact that it puts a barrier between the citizens and who represents them.

[Green_Lantern]

16. States who are toss ups now would probably go red...

Democrats always do better in a national Senate race with bigger voter turn outs. That's not as likely to happen when the only public elections allow voting in district races alone.

Without the 17th Amendment states like Ohio would probably go red as far as Senate.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Repealing the 17th Amendment would be diluting the peoples' power by

putting an added layer between them and their Senators, thus making any form of progressive change even more difficult.

The dynamic that requires vast quantities of money in politics is actually diminishing, because of technological innovation, ie: the Internet.

The game is changing, the status quo know it and that's why they're trying to save their "elite" asses by removing any restraint on corporate political spending, ie; "Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission;" as a means to shut down the peoples' voices from being heard above their mega-phones. It's the death scream of the mortally wounded one way,top down, authoritarian, corporate supremacist beast; they're most dangerous when they're cornered.

Thanks for the thread, iamjoy.

[Green_Lantern]

9. Even the GOP President at the time, Taft, supported this

Amendment. They had a good pressing reason. State Legislatures were more beholden to special interests and full of corruption than the national Congress.

[TheKentuckian]

12. No way. Putting those off the reservation royalist further from the hands of the people

makes a bad situation worse. It is a mess as it is with the minority having a structural advantage and destroying progress and the any effort to work for most Americans.

Your move just allows the corporate run state houses to completely skip the will of the people in a silly effort to further compromise with the Reich wing and corporate moneychangers that have already run roughshod for over a generation.

[littlewolf]

14. well there certainly would be fewer unfunded mandates n/t

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

15. State legislatures are relatively dominated by rural interests

[Odin2005]

17. Just get rid of the Senate.