Posted on 10/07/2018 7:29:48 PM PDT by vannrox
“No taxation without representation!”
That was a popular phrase during the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. Colonists thought it was unfair to be taxed and subjected to English rule without consent.
Today Washington DC hands down laws and taxes to every one of the 320 million people living in the United States.
And just like under English rule, we are not represented in the federal government.
Now I know what you’re thinking… we have the right to vote for our leaders.
Our votes send Representatives, Senators, and the President to Washington DC. And they represent our interests in government.
US Representatives are elected by the people, split up into districts.
They go to Washington DC and make up the House of Representatives; one half of Congress.
Congress is the entire legislative branch. They write and pass all the laws in the USA.
When America was brand new, each Representative came from a district of about 40,000 people.
But as the US population grew, the number of Reps in Congress was limited to just 435. That meant the number of citizens each member represented grew as well…
Today, Representatives are elected by districts averaging about 713,000 people.
That means our votes for US Representative are about 6% as potent as they were when America was founded.
(I’m going by total population and not by voting population to keep it simple. But the same lesson applies if you do the math based on voting population.)
Our representation in the House of Representatives has been diluted by a factor of 17.
The US Senate makes up the other half of Congress.
Senators are elected by the entire population of each state, with a simple majority-wins vote.
But it wasn’t supposed to be like that.
Until 1913, Senators were elected by each state legislature.
Every state has its own Congress, mirroring the US system. You vote for state Representatives and state Senators and they run the state government.
It was the folks running your state government that once elected US Senators to send to Washington DC. This gave state governments representation in Washington DC.
So the citizens controlled the US House of Representatives by directly voting for who would represent them from their district.
And state governments controlled the US Senate by the state legislatures voting for who would represent the state in the federal government.
Of course, the people still elected the state Senators and state Reps who then elected US Senators.
But in 1913, the 17th Amendment allowed popular vote in each state to elect US Senators. So it became a state-wide race, just like Governor.
Sounds like this gives the people more voice in the federal government… but it actually gave us way WAY less of a say.
Let’s use Louisiana as an example…
By population size, Lousiana is the median state. Half of the states have a larger population, and half the states have a smaller population. Lousiana is smack dab in the middle.
Louisiana has a total of 105 state Representatives. Each state Rep is elected by a district of about 45,000 people.
39 state Senators are elected by districts of about 120,000 people each.
The entire population of Louisiana is about 4.7 million.
So in a statewide race for US Senator, your vote is just one out of 4,700,000.
Your vote is 105 times more powerful in a state Representative race (1/45,000 vs. 1/4,700,000).
It counts 105x more than your vote for US Senator.
Your vote is 39 times as potent in a state Senate race (1/120,000 vs. 1/4,700,000).
It matters 39x more than your vote for US Senator.
But imagine if the state Reps still chose the US Senator…
He or she has 1 vote out of 105 total Reps.
And your state Senator’s vote accounts for 1 out of 39 total Senators.
Remember, your vote for state Rep and state Senate actually matter… in these small districts you have 105x and 39x more power than in a state-wide race.
So compared to the US Senate race, your vote has a MUCH higher probability of influencing 2 seats out of the 144 member legislature (39 Senators + 105 Reps).
If both your choices get elected, you have chosen 1.4% of the state legislators who will choose your US Senator.
But your vote for US Senate in the state-wide race gives you just .00002% say in who gets elected US Senator.
If both your choices for state Rep and state Senate get elected, you have 70,000 times more control over who gets elected US Senator.
But what if neither of your choices for state Rep and Senate gets elected?
It means you have 0% say in who gets elected US Senator…
Which is statistically equal to your .00002% say you have right now.
So the worst possible scenario in the old system is statistically the same as the only scenario in the current system.
You have a 100% chance of having no voice in the current system.
But when state legislators elected US Senators, you had a much better shot at having some voice in the decision. And when you got that voice, it counted for so much more.
1913 was a bad year…
You could say it was the beginning of a new United States of America… which hardly resembled the old structure.
It was the beginning of taxation without representation… The complete reversal of everything Americans fought for and achieved during the American Revolution.
It began the era of the American Empire. A centralized government, large enough to do whatever it wanted without restraint.
Too large for the people to control through representative democracy.
We still have a chance to be represented in state governments. But secession is a topic for another day…
I think we have far too much democracy in our republic today. Voting should be a privilege, not an automatic right. 18 is too young to vote (unless it's an active-duty military person). I think it should be raised to 25, perhaps even 30. No one working for the government should have the right to vote (save the military), because they're voting on their own jobs. A premier reason why DC was never meant to be able to vote. Neither should anyone receiving government welfare. I will concede to you drastic changes need to be made on voting, but I don't agree on the 17th repeal.
Rollo, this ain’t my first time at the rodeo. This subject has been endlessly debated at FR and every aspect of it.
Your points have been cited by others and refuted. A state legislature doesn’t have some magic insight into U.S. Senators that a regular electorate does. This notion of electing statesmen upholding the rights and interests of the states isn’t going to happen.
The country knew by the end of the 19th century that the U.S. Senate was a joke. Political bosses and hacks/puppets. They weren’t grandly defending the states, they were defending themselves, special interests and their own power. The country demanded direct accountability. The 17th didn’t pass in a vacuum, it had to be ratified by those same state legislatures because they knew the people would toss them out of office if they didn’t.
There wouldn’t be a fiscal conservative ever elected to the U.S. Senate again except by accident. Each Senator would be battling to outdo the other in looting the treasury on behalf of his or her state. That would be their sole goal in office.
It wouldn’t matter if a state legislature were Republican or Democrat in that regard. Look at Texas, which until not long ago had two left-wing RINOs in control of the State Senate (Dewhurst) and House (Straus). Had there not been a popular vote for Senator, the junior Senator from Texas would be the RINO Dewhurst instead of Conservative Ted Cruz.
If you couldn’t get Texas to elect a Constitutional Conservative to the Senate via the legislature, which state would ?
I love the Electoral College. Presidential electors are persons chosen by the campaign of the party’s presidential ticket to cast electoral votes for said ticket, and such electors give their word that they will vote for such ticket. The agency principle is very clear, and electors are proxies with a single job to do and clear instructions of how to do it.
On the other hand, when people elect members of the state legislature, they do so for all sorts of reasons, including whether they got funding to fix the potholes in their neighborhood and who they would be supporting for state house speaker. If such state representatives were to elect a U.S. Senator from the state, they would be acting based on their own whims and caprices, and *not* following the instructions of the voters, given that potential U.S. Senate candidates were not in the ballot, or even under consideration, when the election took place. I think that a Texas conservative should be able to decide for himself whether he wants Ted Cruz or RINO David Dewhurst as the state’s representative in the U.S. Senate instead of letting state legislators beholden to Dewhurst make the choice.State legislators are there to pass state laws, and in a representative democracy voters entrust legislators for such purpose, but the election of representatives to Congress, irrespective of whether it’s the upper or lower house, is a responsibility that belongs to the people alone.
When the Framers created a bicameral legislature, by far the most important distinction between the houses was that the Senate had equal representation among states while House members were apportioned by population. That equal representation was the most important attribute of the upper chamber should be obvious to anyone who has read the Constitution, given that Article V, which provides for the mechanisms to amend the Constitution, expressly forbids any amendment that would deny a state its equal representation in the Senate without such state’s consent. The only other constitutional clause that Article V prevented from being modified through amendment was the restriction on Congress banning the importation of slaves, but even that exclusion had a sunset provision. We could amend the Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College (which I would oppose with all my might), but we could not amend the Constitution to give California more Senators than Alaska unless Alaska consented.
The second most important distinction between the upper and lower chambers was that the Senate was supposed to be more deliberative, with its members serving staggered, six-year terms (so only 1/3 of Senators could be replaced in a single biennial election) while the House was more dynamic and susceptible to large-scale change and its members served for only two-year terms. The third distinction between houses—that senators were elected by the state legislature while representatives were elected by state residents with the same voting qualifications as that of the most numerous house of the state legislature—was a meatless bone tossed to members of the Constitutional Convention who were concerned that the new Constitution differed too much from the Articles of Confederation. The election of senators by state legislators resulted in corruption and malfeasance, and the overwhelming majority of state legislatures over a century ago decided to get rid of the system and replace it with the popular election of senators, as evidenced by the fact that the 17th Amendment was approved by 73% of legislatively appointed U.S. Senators and was ratified by 36 out of the 37 state legislatures that voted on it between 1912 and 1913 (all but Utah).
Our Constitution preserves federalism by having citizens of the states, qua state voters, elect members of Congress and presidential electors, and by limiting Congress to its enumerated and implied powers. We don’t need the abrogation of voting rights as a way to prop up federalism, because the states are composed of their people, not their legislators. It would be foolhardy to give up one’s right to vote for representatives to Congress so that a politician votes instead.
As for your preference for limiting the franchise to property owners, I agree wholeheartedly. And I would go a step further and deny the franchise to elected officials and other persons who work for the government (excluding active-duty military) or who receive welfare payments. Our representatives in Congress (and in the state legislature, for that matter) should be responsive to the private citizens who pay for the government, not to freeloaders or to people casting self-serving votes.
What? Where? Are you going to trade a near Super Majority for a slim margin to defend your position, lol.
In my State, 2 Repub Senators would have been serving for the last 30 years along with the fact that South Florida would be neutralized.
In Texas, Cornyn sure as crap is not a “conservative” or whatever that means so your point is moot. Also, guess what, State Reps can be changed on a dime, so where is the refutation at.
You are grasping at straws here.
One more question, do you believe metropolitan (As a whole) areas should control who is elected to the Senate?
I don't think she's right about the calculation.
But just in practical terms, if you live in a Democrat state, you may still have a chance of electing a Republican by popular vote, but you will never do so by a vote of the state legislature.
Not unless returning election of senators to state legislators made state legislatures and state elections function in a radically different way.
And if you live in a Republican state, the Senators the state legislature sends to Washington would tend to be part of the club, people who've paid their dues to the party machine, not those who would shake things up.
Also one correction for you, the electors are appointed by the State party committee, not the campaign, so not sure where you got your info at. So they are appointed by political Party or a faction (Definitely not the actual candidate), hmmm....
Go look up the countless threads on the subject posted by FReeper Jacquerie.
"Are you going to trade a near Super Majority for a slim margin to defend your position, lol."
What near supermajority ? I just told you there wouldn't be any Conservatives (on purpose) in the Senate with a 17th repeal. You'd have Stalinist Democrats and weak-kneed RINOs like Murkowski infesting the body each working to bleed the treasury dry. So, again, what are you gonna get from repeal ? Who are these grand statesmen that will magically rise from corrupt legislatures ? They don't exist.
"In my State, 2 Repub Senators would have been serving for the last 30 years along with the fact that South Florida would be neutralized."
One of those "Republican Senators" would be The Orange Menace, Good Time Charlie Crist. The other would probably be Iliana Ros-Lehtinen. Still think you're coming out ahead ?
"In Texas, Cornyn sure as crap is not a “conservative” or whatever that means so your point is moot."
I never mentioned Cornyn. I said the junior Senator would be the liberal RINO David Dewhurst. He racked up the endorsements from the legislature while the Conservative base supported Ted Cruz. The other Senator under your scenario would probably be his left-wing counterpart in the House, Joe Straus.
"Also, guess what, State Reps can be changed on a dime, so where is the refutation at."
Baloney. Those same House members deposed a Conservative Speaker for a RINO, and they kept electing him. He's only now retiring, and there's no guarantee they won't elect another RINO despite having a 2/3rds supermajority. Joe Straus would never have permitted his body to elect a Conservative Senator.
"You are grasping at straws here."
Nope. I pretty much decimated your argument. You failed to outline how any Conservative will get elected past even 2/3rds GOP legislatures like Texas. Legislatures want one thing -- money -- and a Conservative Senator favoring austerity and fiscal responsibility would stand in the way of them getting federal largesse.
Look at States that traditionally vote for Repub candidates versus the Senators that represent them. You have that extremely backwards.
Democrat States elect Democrat Senators. Republican States ALSO elect Democrat Senators (All politics are local and all of that urban center stuff).
Bingo. States like Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, et al, would never have the most remote shot of electing a Republican again if it were up to the legislature. Look at Hawaii, there are ZERO Republicans in their State Senate and very few State House members. That state won’t ever elect a Republican.
You absolutely nailed, too, that GOP states would send types like Flake, Murkowski and McCain to the Senate. You couldn’t even get a Conservative out of Texas or Florida. The creepy Crist, who switched to the Democrats when the Republicans refused to nominate him for Senator - he’d have been elected by the legislature to the Senate and still voting virtually the same way — far left — as he now does as a useless freshman House member.
My gosh, I get tired of hearing that he legislature should have my vote for the senate. They would have put in Jeff Flake and kept him there. Another layer of the powerful between them and us.
Jacquerie merely repeats the same claims about the 17th being the source of all evil in the U.S., which is ludicrous. Just because a political figure is not popular doesn't mean he or she won't be elected. Crist would've easily been elected Senator via the legislature, and would've typified the types you'd see passing for "Republicans" in an elite body.
"Since the 17th Amendment, our debt and spending has spiraled out of control with the votes of Senate "CONSERVATIVES" elected by the populous. Since the expansion of voting rights our debt and spending has spiraled out of control aided by the votes of Senate "CONSERVATIVES" elected by the populous. Reagan, considered a CONSERVATIVE, expanded government agencies and SPENDING (NON-DEFENSE related mind you, LOOK UP THE NUMBERS), with the help of the CONSERVATIVE Senate elected through a POPULISTS system."
Who would've reigned it in ? Do you know how many Republicans would've been elected to the Senate in the 1930s as an example to stop FDR's expansionist horror ? How 'bout from the 1960s to 1990s ? Virtually every state legislature except for a handful were taken over by the Democrats. It would've been rubber-stamp city, baby. As bad as it is now, it would've been even worse.
And the equal representation of the states would guarantee a voice for the small states in the government - a voice that wouldn't be heard otherwise.
The idea, though, that the senators were expected to be agents of the state legislators isn't quite so well-founded.
The opponents of the constitution pointed out that the state legislatures' right to choose senators didn't amount to so much if state governments weren't allowed to recall senators who didn't do their bidding.
Obviously, senators would have to be accountable to the state legislators, but from the beginning, they had more freedom of action than we might think now.
Other than for repeal of the 17th, I’m not necessarily criticizing some of your goals and points about the massive size of the government/spending, et al. I’m just telling you that what you want won’t be accomplished by turning Senate elections back over to the state legislatures than what we have now. That’s the basic point here.
I believe we have a better chance keeping the Senators popularly elected (albeit with a recall petition, which would require a Constitutional Amendment) and leaning on them hard to achieve change than we do going back to the old way, which removes any direct accountability to the voters.
“BTW “The States” have 535 Representatives and Senators in Congress.”
Do you not know that the US House of Representative is called “The People’s House?”
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