The 17th Amendment was the worst constitutional amendment IMO because it removes the most powerful check on the power of Congress controlling everything. Look at all the options to make changes to our government, via Amendment, Convention, Laws, Court decisions, etc. and it comes down to who controls Congress. The Congress decides which offices require Senate confirmation. The Congress can impeach/remove any Executive/Judicial officer. The Congress decides whether there can be a Convention and all the rules associated with said Convention call. The Congress decides what Amendments can be sent to the States.
If we are to save our American Constitutional Republic for a few more centuries (and maybe longer) then we got to figure out how to put in place some realistic check on the ability for a small oligarchy to control everything by controlling Congress. Unfortunately such an Amendment would need to do some sort of grandfathering so that the current crop of Congresscritters (and their controllers) will actually allow the “Check/Balance” amendment to be sent to the States for ratification.
Our only alternative in the long run will be a bloody Revolution and I think we can prevent it.
My suggested language is as follows:
1. The most numerous branch of each of the State legislatures may pass a resolution anytime to immediately expel any Senator in Congress from their State to create an immediate vacancy.
2. For the first six years after this Amendment becomes valid as part of the Constitution this amendment shall not be so construed as to affect any Senator ever chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
I’d really want to have another Amendment passed as well.
1. The Representatives, not counting the Speaker and other Officers of the House, shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by their State legislatures, and paid out from their States.
2. The number of people per Representative shall not be more than sixty Thousand per Representative whenever the Representatives shall be reapportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.
3. The provisions of this Amendment shall begin to take affect starting when the next reapportionment takes place at least six years after this Amendment becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
You will note that my reason for paragraph #2 in the first proposed amendment and paragraph #3 in the second proposed amendment is that the current power holders (and their power controllers behind the scenes) in Congress would never pass such Amendments unless they could be grandfathered in their current positions of power.
Why I’d like to see the House be about 6000 members is that it would dilute the power that any individual seat has and make the House members be more accountable to their individual constituents. It would also greatly reduce the risks of gerrymandering having much real impact. What we’d see is a Congress that convenes in-person once every 2 years, elect Speaker/Officers, and then hold House votes 1-2x per month with the members all voting remotely & generally getting together in their State capitols where they can coordinate things with their State legislature/executive branch officials. Sure there would be some budget for committees and special task forces. We’d still have various congressional agencies like CBO and the Capitol Police performing legislative branch functions. But the days of power being endlessly concentrated in DC without any real checks/balances would be over.
Having these battleground Congressional races costing tens of millions each has ensured that Congress has become the playground of the rich oligarchs where the informed people will not really have a voice as those thugs will just buy up their votes with their empty promises of utopia. For example, we have an idiot in Texas named Beto who has spent over 38M (mostly from oligarch-oriented powermongers out-of-state) goes around saying that “health care is a right” without any honesty about how we’ll pay for it. Many people, all uninformed, eat up such dishonest soudbites without really thinking about it. If a fool like this were to get elected then the Texas House of Representatives would need to be able to remove him in case he doesn’t really serve the best interests of Texas in the Senate.
I’d be all for the Electoral College being revamped where each Congressional District gets one Electoral Vote and each State gets 2 Electoral Votes. We have 2 States that already do this. But as long as we have the situation where California can have winner-take-all but Texas be split-up (or vice versa) then that’ll never happen unless it happens across-the-board.
We don’t need an amendment to “undo” the Seventeenth Amendment. We need states to reclaim the representation THEY concede to the popular vote election of senators to Congress. They can implement qualification requirements at the state level that allow their own preferred way of choosing Senatorial candidates that would then be elected by the popular vote of their citizens. Instead of choosing a particular person as Senator, they would be choosing a pool of candidates who had passed their test for the office who then could be put before the public for popular votes. This way, you get the power back into the hands of the States AND you comply with the popular vote requirement of the Seventeenth Amendment.