Sorry, I didn’t mean to get snarky there. I actually had to look up the exact year, if it makes you feel better (The only thing I knew was that it was before FDR, because the 19th amendment-women’s suffrage-was added in 1920, which was before his time.)
I find it amazing that people can pull facts out of the air and when called on it…
Not even bother to say…ooops you caught me.
Yes, because it will make government closer, not farther from the people.
The purpose of the Senate was not just to be the chamber of detached rationality, but to be the states’ check on the power of the federal government; read the federalist papers for background.
Senators elected by state legislatures would fight to ensure that more decisions were kept at the state level (hence, more responsive to the people) and to control the growth of the federal government. The consequences (an oversized, distant, debt-riddled bureaucracy) were entirely predictable. The Senate was every bit as important a check-and-balance as the judiciary.
And if done right, it would be a form of proportional representation, opening the system to third-party and independent candidates.
Another solution, one we’re considering in Florida right now, is to take the decennial redistricting process away from the state legislature and give it to an independent nonpartisan commission. (This would apply to redistricting for state legislative as well as Congressional seats; both are strikingly noncompetitive at present.) The Committee for Fair Elections (http://www.committeeforfairelections.com/) is collecting petitions to get a constitutional amendment to that effect on the November 2006 ballot. If you’re registered to vote in Florida, please sign the petition! (A set of three petitions, actually.) We need 75,000 signatures to get the Supreme Court to review the language and a total of 750,000 to get the measures on the ballot.
Publius was not right about everything, furt. And the states acting as a “check on the power of the federal government” has caused our country no end of trouble and strife. Remember Jim Crow and the “Sovereignty Commissions”?
What makes you think state governments are any more “responsive to the people” than Congress is? I’m reminded of “Lind’s Law” (formulated by political commentator Michael Lind based on his experience dealing with federal, state and local governments): The farther down you go in the levels-of-government hierarchy, the more stupid, incompetent and corrupt the public officials tend to be.
Please read more carefully; I was not citing them as inerrant, I was citing them as explaining the original purpose of the senate and it’s means of election.
Hence I would not wish for unchecked state governments, either. Are you going to contend that the federal government is always right?
I submit that all things being equal, the fewer voters per legislator, the more vulnerable each legislator is to grassroots opposition, hence more responsive.
And the fewer voters needed to replace them.
The majority of legislatures always conducted Senate elections by joint ballot. In 1866, acting under its power to regulate the time and manner of Senate elections, Congress passed a law requiring joint ballots in all states if a first, separate ballot failed to produce a common winner.
Nevertheless, deadlocks were common. Often no candidate could get a majority on the joint ballot because dissident factions within a party would refuse to support the caucus choice. Delaware was unrepresented in the Senate from March 1901 until March 1903.
I suspect that this would be less of a problem for today’s more “disciplined” (or, depending on your POV, more “spineless”) party caucuses.
I don’t think we need to do away with direct election of Senators.
I do think that we sure as hell need term limits on them, though.