[url=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Congress#Elections”]This wikipedia article makes the claim that,
This sounds entirely implausible to me. I know of the occasional case where two Senate elections occur simultaneously in the same state, such as to fill vacancies or when a state joins the Union. But I have never heard of a Senate election that was not statewide.
Whatsa dope?
Since the idea of the Senate was to create representatives for the state as a whole, I am skeptical of this claim.
First of all, when Senators were chosen by State legislatures, this couldn’t have happened, because you couldn’t have part of a legislature do it.
So, it would have had to have occurred after the adoption of the 17th Amendment. And I can’t find an example of a state trying this.
There is no procedure for apportioning Senate seats by the Census under the Constitution.
I’ve never heard of a Senate seat that wasn’t “at large” (over the entire state). The whole idea of the Senate is that it represents the state-level interests, while the House is filled with people whose concerns are more local.
I think Wikipedia is full of crap. I have never heard of any state in history doing this. What kind of fact checking, if any, does Wikipedia enforce?
None. You could post an article to wikipedia. It is not a great site to cite.
There is no fact checking at Wiki.
Wikipedia is a great resource for me when I’ve heard of something new that I know little about, it gives a good general explanation. For any academic work you cannot use them as there is no verifiable authority to anything there.
I could go to Wikipedia.org right now and replace that article on the Senate with an article about autoerotic masturbation, the Wikipedia admins are pretty quick about dealing with such things but ultimately Wikipedia is an “open source” encyclopedia.
There has absolutely, positively never been an occasion in United States history when a state even so much as attempted to divide itself into districts for purposes of a senatorial election.
The Constitution doesn’t seem concerned with whether both Senators from a state are elected in the same year, just that a third of the total are elected every two years.
The more interesting question is could a state do this? The 17th Amendment, which currently governs the election of senators states
Does “elected by the people thereof” mean all the people thereof? I tend to think it should but I’m not sure. I took a quick browse around the U.S. Code Chapter on congressional elections (2 U.S.C. Chp. 2) and didn’t see anything to prevent senatorial districts. I vaguely remember hearing something about a court case on the issue, but I may well have made that up.
–Cliffy
Study up a bit.
The third every two years is the House.
It’s awfully hard two get a third out of two senators.
Section 7 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia allows one of the states (Queensland) to split itself up into separate electorates for the purposes of electing senators to the Commonwealth Parliament:
"The Senate shall be composed of senators for each State, directly chosen by the people of the State, voting, until the Parliament otherwise provides, as one electorate.
But until the Parliament of the Commonwealth otherwise provides, the Parliament of the State of Queensland, if that State be an Original State, may make laws dividing the State into divisions and determining the number of senators to be chosen for each division, and in the absence of such provision the State shall be one electorate."
I think SmackFu meant one third of the total number of Senators every two years, not one third of the Senators from a particular state. In other words, one third of the Senate stands for re-election every two years but each individual (other than for vacancies) runs every 6 years.
Hrm?
The entire House of Representatives is up for election every two years. Not just part of it.
And the “third” obviously doesn’t refer to the two senators from a state. SmackFu is referring to the fact that a third (approximately) of all Senators are elected or re-elected every two years — even though their individual terms are six years.
It’s an approximate, rounded third when the number of states is not divisible by 3, as is the case now. The current Senate election classes are divided 33–33–34.
You are right…my bad.
IANAL, but I believe that it would be unconstitutional to set up Senate districts in the U.S.
When the Framers were debating the setup of the Senate, there was debate on how many Senators each state would have. Originally, people thought one per state would be enough. But then people thought, “Well, you know that guy could get sick or die and then that state has no one.”
So, some people suggested two per state. Others suggested three. In the end, they settled on two. That way the state would always have someone looking after its interest in the Senate.
There’s some discussion of this at Wikipedia here. The guy who wrote it sounds fairly unsure.
Senate Seats, when a new State enters the union, are divided into one of three “classes” The classes are determined by drawing lots. The class determines which year the seat is up for re-election and the seat stays in that class forever (as far as I know). Every two years about a third of the senate is up for re-election. Senate terms last for six years.
All senate races are at large across the entire State.
I don’t think there were ever two Senate districts either, but here’s a way it could have occurred.
The idea of direct election of Senators had been around for several decades before the Amendent was approved. By the early 1900’s, the House had actually passed the idea like 20 times.
Around this time, the states discovered how to elect Senators by a vote of the people and still pass US constitutional requirements. They had the legislatures pledge to follow the selection made by a vote of the people. By 1912, a good number of the US Senators had been so elected, and the amendment was finally approved for the states to do likewise.
Now, this procedure doesn’t preclude the division into separate districts–I have no knowledge such a thing ever happened, but since the selection of Senators under such a procedure was not technically by “a vote of the people” but by the lesgislature, I think two districts could have avoided constitutional challege.
Hawaii is divided this way, east, west.
STATE SENATORIAL DISTRICTS
[pdf format]