So You Still Want to Choose Your Senator?

The New York Times (Terrorist Tip Sheet) ^ | June 1, 2010 | David Firestone

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Few members of the Tea Party have endorsed Rand Paul’s misgivings about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but a surprising number are calling for the repeal of an older piece of transformative legislation: the 17th Amendment. If you don’t have the Constitution on your smartphone, that’s the one adopted in 1913 that provides for direct popular election of United States senators.

Allowing Americans to choose their own senators seems so obvious that it is hard to remember that the nation’s founders didn’t really trust voters with the job. The people were given the right to elect House members. But senators were supposed to be a check on popular rowdiness and factionalism. They were appointed by state legislatures, filled with men of property and stature.

A modern appreciation of democracy — not to mention a clear-eyed appraisal of today’s dysfunctional state legislatures — should make the idea unthinkable. But many Tea Party members and their political candidates are thinking it anyway, convinced that returning to the pre-17th Amendment system would reduce the power of the federal government and enhance state rights.

Senate candidates have to raise so much money to run that they become beholden to special interests, party members say. They argue that state legislators would not be as compromised and would choose senators who truly put their state’s needs first.

Around the country, Tea Party affiliates and some candidates have been pressing for repeal — though there also has been a lot of hasty backtracking by politicians once the voters realized the implications. In Idaho, two candidates in last month’s Republican primary for the First District House seat said they favored repeal, including the winner, Raul Labrador...

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The Senator might be selected as a result not of the majority support, but do to gerrymandering that helps a party.

Good point.

There's something naive about plans to have state legislatures select Senators, when the parties spend millions drawing district lines to advance their own interests.

The other alternative -- going back to having state legislators represent counties, rather than an equal number of voters -- isn't going to fly either. No way cities are going to let themselves be disenfranchised.