[DoctorMichael]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.............

But there WERE reasons for taking the designation of Senators away from the State legislators in the first place, weren't there? Cronyism?

I'm not that familiar with the history of the 17th Amendment...................an interesting proposal though.

[LenS]

One reason the amendment appeared was because it was easier for "special interests" to buy a Senator. All you had to do was buy or influence a State Legislature. That was much easier task than buying half of the electorate. At the end of the 19th Century, some of the new emerged corporate giants had a disproportionate influence (unlike today when a Microsoft's contributions are countered by a Sun's contributions or one of tens of thousands of other businesses). Senators were often known as the Senator for Standard Oil instead of the Senator from Ohio or California.

[Political Junkie Too]

One poster on the other thread suggested that it was in response to the growing power of rail barons. I questioned whether that was due to the "Old West" mentality from the former Territories that were recently admitted as states. Since the Seventeenth amendment we had two world wars, the crash of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression. The "Old West" cronyism that might have been the impetus for the amendment doesn't hold (in my opinion) in today's world of instantaneous communication.

What we need is to give states some of their power back, and the best way to do that is to let them pick the senators the way the Founding Fathers intended the two-chamber Congress to work -- the people's chamber and the states' chamber. With states appointing the Senators, we can eliminate the need for expensive campaigns every two years (for 1/3 of the Senate), make any campaign money that is spent to be spent locally in the states, and get people more focused on statehouse elections.

Let the Senators be beholden to the state legislatures instead of special interests.

-PJ