Posted on 12/29/2004 5:15:20 PM PST by CHARLITE
It is, by virtue of the 17the Amendment. It was supposed to be appointed by the individual state legislatures.
Or, do you mean that the Senate should be up to a national direct vote, where the nation as a whole chooses 100 Senators?
-PJ
Before I would support the idea, we need safeguards like a national non-partisan elections agency, a uniform national vote standard, a provision for a revote or run-off in a disputed election and a percentage high enough to elect a President while preserving our two party system. As you can see, its simply not enough to abolish the Electoral College. If Feinstein were serious, she'd put all this stuff in her proposed constitutional amendment. Personally, I think giving up the state by state nature of our presidential elections would alter the character of our federal union. My attitude on the subject has always been, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
I would actually prefer a reform to assign Electoral Votes not on a Winner Take All basis but on a District Win Formula basis. In other words, a state's electoral votes would be awarded to whomever won the congressional district in the state and the two bonus votes would go to the statewide popular vote winner. The formula would enfranchise voters who do not now see their candidate win in a state and it would make candidates pay attention even to states in which they don't campaign now since they have a chance to win at least one electoral vote in a state even where they can't win the statewide popular vote. (Very different from the current setup in which people's votes are wasted for a candidate who can't win ALL of the state's electoral votes). It would reduce voter apathy, increase turnout and create a disincentive for electoral fraud. All without the need for a constitutional amendment. State Legislatures would simply have to change the current WTA method to bring fairness and accountability to the Electoral College.
Sorry...I was getting at whether we should still have the Senate up for direct vote per the 17th Amendment. I would say that if they weren't up for election by the public and were selected by the state legislatures, then they would need to be limited in their tenure somehow. Just kicking that out there...and it's bedtime for me right now.
If every state adopted district elections, it would increase their power. You're going to have to have every state legislature adopt it to make it effective. The only reason the WTA method prevails is cause we're used to doing it that way and politicians from the majority party in the states want to keep minority party voters disenfranchised. That's why we should try this simple reform before we go to the drastic step of amending the Constitution to change something we've had for two centuries.
I'm all for repealing the 17th Amendment. I'd let the make-up of the state legislature be the tenure-limiting function. Let their choice of Senator be a factor when voting for state legislators.
-PJ
To make the Senate a more federal institution, I'd like to see Senators take orders directly from the state legislature that named them - like in the German Bundesrat. You know, give the states a real say in federal policy-making.
They both do seem to exist as if the other didn't, don't they?
-PJ
newzjunkey wrote:Liberals see this as a reason that federal spending on social programs and other extraconstitutional spending should be increased in California.
We get about 70 cents back on every dollar sent to the Feds while New Mexico, for example, gets over TWO DOLLARS back for each tax dollar. We can't get even a pittance of what we're rightfully owed for housing illegal immigrants and the Fed's inept border policy, needed for detaining them.
Conservatives see this as evidence that we should reduce federal spending and reduce federal taxes and get the federal government out of many programs for which there is no constitutional authority for the federal involvement that exists today. Sending money to Washington DC so a bunch of corrupt politicians can divvy it up to enhance their own power is stupid, not to mention inefficient. Much of the federal budget should never be routed through Washington in the first place. Most of it should be handled entirely by states and local governments. The entire Department of Education is one example.
I disagree. Of course they're in the same relative position in terms of ranking. But in terms of the influence they yield on the voting process the extra two votes do indeed give the smaller states more power. What you're not taking into account when you "remove" the 2 votes is that they are not evenly distributed by candidate. If candidate A wins 35 states and candidate B wins 15, that means candidate A has a 40-vote advantage that is not proportional to population.
I know what you mean, I live in one of the many red counties of California, so my vote didn't help Bush win. But I don't really mind since it means that the power of the highly corrupt left wing state government can have on the presidential election is limited to the population of the state in terms of a nationally uniform census process.
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