PING!
Honestly, this is an issue I do not understand. I promise you, if the legislature of SC was in charge of senators, we wouldn’t have Tim Scott, but we would still have Lindsey Graham and we would never have had Jim DeMint. Repealing the 17th is not a panacea...
When explained, the reason for Senators being eleted by State Legislature make perfect.. Wonder if people would be for it, if explained the political rancor would die down if 17th Amendment would be repealed and “things’ would get done.
We could start by going one and one. One from the legislature and one popularily elected.
We don’t need any stinking house of lords elected by their socialist cronies in state legislatures. We don’t need even more pork. Even the general electorate isn’t as much in favor of more regulations and taxes as the conniving legislators.
I would like to get rid of the 17th but asking people to give up their “right” to vote for senators is a high hurdle.
You might be able to change the way they’re elected so its not a popular vote. Maybe an electoral type of system where a certain number of votes are allotted to individual districts.
We definitely need recall power over senators.
Yes it is a shame .. and the reason is that when the States selected their senators - then the senators were usually selected because they adhered to the principles and policies of the governor of the state who appointed them.
The way it is now, the senators are all over the place .. and some of them are there specifically to be a thorn in the side of their Governor.
Awww it placed a burden on Republican candidates. Can’t any of these people do anything that is not partisan, but for the good of the U.S.?
“Idahoans want their voices to be heard.”
That is what the House of Representatives is for, moron.
Seems that Canyon County, Idaho needs to find itself a representative who understands the separation of powers.
I am shocked that senators from either party would be opposed to such a measure and would bring pressure to bear against any such measure from whatever source.
Shocked I tell you, shocked!
Those damn uppity people thinking they know better.
When’s my Tee Time with the chief?
“...I can’t imagine taking the voting power away from all 1.6 million people in Idaho and giving it to just 105 people in the Idaho Legislature to elect our United States senators.”
Does this dumb s.o.b. not realize that those 105 people in the legislature would be elected by the people and this is exactly what the founding fathers wanted?
The 17th Amendment is the reason why there is so much money in politics. It’s also the main source of hyper-partisanship, the reason power is concentrated in Washington, and why the debt has been exploding ever since.
The 17th Amendment put the nails in the coffin of states' rights.
Too bad. Repealing the 17th is one of the best things we can do to correct what’s wrong in America. The states, as sovereign authorities, must have a veto on federal abuse.
The real problem is that it's next to impossible to for groups of people to carve out new states from old states. A state like Californian can completely run over and exploit one group for the benefit of another and those exploited can't do a thing because only by the consent of the current government can they create a new state. And governments almost never give up their power over others voluntarily.
The constitution needs a "self-determination" amendment that allows large groups within existing states to make their own state.
Keep it there. What’s wrong with these people?
The original plan of the Constitutional committee was for the House members to represent the people directly and for the Senators to represent the sundry state governments, not their people directly. This had an exquisitely subtle effect of moving national issues down to either the state level or directly to the people. The idea behind "democratizing" this in the 17th Amendment was that the Senate would be more directly accountable to the voters, but with a six-year term of office that simply hasn't been true in practice. But the marginalization of power for the state governments has been very real.
The flip side of the notion is that corruption would be more concentrated at the state level as well - a single power group sufficient to seize control of a state would have a direct and unopposed line to the federal government. Montesquieu among others felt that local corruption was more easily dealt with than concentrated, distant corruption - I think he may have been correct in this - but that doesn't make it any less corrupt. Without direct election it is easier for such a state-level power group to influence the federal. With it, the state government loses influence and the corruption moves to a less accessible level. It's a choice for realists, IMHO, and the idealists made it and have ever since been burned by it.
Just my $0.02.