Looking at it, I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable. While not certain I agree with it I can see a reasoning that senators - appointed by the states - are in place to represent the interests of the state and its government. When directly elected, they then change their representation from the state government - as embodied by the governor and legislature - to the people of the state directly.
That may be a fine distinction but it’s a real one. There’s already one house of congress that is empowered to directly represent the people, those 435 members of the House of Representatives. Is there a need for another 100 people covering the same bases or would a return to senators representing the state governments to Washington be better?
Without the 17th the Senate represents the majority party in each state, not the people of that state. If you consider a state to be the legislature and not its citizens then it makes sense to repeal the 17th. Apparently the citizens of the states didn’t feel that way in the past which is why we have the 17th amendment.
The Civil War put an end to the notion that “states” are individual semi-nations banded together in a federation for the purpose of presenting a unified international front. As such, the idea that the Senators (the “wise men” of the nation) should represent the interests of those semi-nations in the national government went away.
Senators still fulfill their main purpose, which is to act to restrain the populism of the House of Representatives. We see them doing that quite a bit lately; they’ve done it on numerous occasions since the 17th Amendment was passed.
I contribute to the campaigns of the Senators in my state because I want them to win. However, I am under no illusion they feel any debt to me as a result.
That’s a different matter not covered by the 17th. The citizens of a state can ignore the election media extravaganza and still elect the candidate they want. Repealing the 17th will take that opportunity away (assuming a return to the legislature appointments).
You don’t think people in each state select the senators who are most likely to represent their state’s interests?
The Framers hoped that having state legislatures select senators would give state legislatures a sense of buy-in to the federal government which would impel them to ratify the Constitution. Mission accomplished. But letting state legislatures select senators proved problematic. In some states, legislatures were deadlocked, and no U.S. senator was elected. Indiana had no senator for two years, Delaware for four.
The issue is not which method is most likely to give a state better representation in the U.S. Senate; it’s whether the people should have that power themselves or delegate it to their state legislatures. Personally, I’ve seen too many yayhoos in state legislatures to believe they’d do a better job of choosing U.S. senators than the general population, yayhoos and all.
Why would any constituent wish to return to having Senators representing the state government? We elect Senators to represent (the majority of) us.
It appears that the 17th was able to resolve another issue/problem. Per your linked article -
Electoral deadlocks were another issue. Because state legislatures were charged with deciding whom to appoint as senators, the system relied on their ability to agree. Some states could not, and thus delayed sending representatives to Congress; in a few cases, the system broke down to the point where states completely lacked representation in the Senate. Deadlocks started to become an issue in the 1850s, with a deadlocked Indiana legislature allowing a Senate seat to sit vacant for two years. Between 1891 and 1905, 46 elections were deadlocked across 20 states; in one extreme example, a Senate seat for Delaware went unfilled from 1899 until 1903. The business of holding elections also caused great disruption in the state legislatures, with a full third of the Oregon House of Representatives choosing not to swear the oath of office in 1897 due to a dispute over an open Senate seat. The result was that Oregon’s legislature was unable to pass legislation that year.
Having butts in the legislative chairs should be better than not having a sufficient number of butts.
Exactly. This is entirely a cynical ploy by the right, as the Senate is immune to their “Redmap” gerrymandering efforts - but state legislatures are not. One need look no further than Virginia, where a 10-point Democratic voting margin blowout was barely enough to bring the Statehouse to a 50/50 split (pending).
I thought all the shenanigans over filling Obama’s vacated seat was a pretty good explanation for why we don’t want repeal the 17th.
I’m sure that’s part of it but in my (anecdotal) experience it’s all related to “going back to the way the Founders wanted it” and it’s usually libertarians.
The state government does not represent the interests of the state, gerrymandering can created situations where almost 2/3rdsd of the votes go to one party and yet the other party keeps control of the state government. The members of congress do not represent the state. They are elected by their constituency and those districts are so gerrymandered that you run into much the same problem. I would rather see at large elections for all members of the house.
Gerrymandering? Are you sure you mean gerrymandering?
AFAIK, the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states.
Could you explain to the class exactly how it would be possible to gerrymander an election for a United States Senator’s seat?