The biggest flaw when reasoning about government is overestimating how well democracy works as a method of solving problems.
If everyone agrees about the major stuff, and you just need to finally make a decision on what color to paint the bike shed, democracy is great. A decision gets made, enough people are happy, and you move on.
But when you have real differences, you need a way to protect minorities against large coalitions of voters. Even if you aren't in a minority today, shifting politics (and divide-and-conquer politicians) will ensure that you are in a minority soon enough.
And it's even worse when society is polarized, because the coalitions form too quickly and too strongly.
But limiting the power of the majority is hard. The Constituion is genius because they recognized that and divded the power so many different ways. The protection of political minorities is much more important than the small amount of additional abstract fairness you get with direct elections.
Have y'all forgotten the entire reason the 16th amendment was passed? It wasn't because of fairness, it was because the state legislatures couldn't agree on people to elect. And when they could there were concerns about corruption and seats being sold.
So let the seats be empty. That will make the constituents mad and they'll vote out the incumbents and replace them with somebody who will appoint Senators. Or they won't. People get the government they deserve.
And if there are "concerns about corruption" then investigate the corruption and put the perpetrators (if any) in prison.
It's strange to say this when you are proposing to take away their direct vote on the matter. If anything, the current system is what gives people the government they deserve, by having voted on it.
And in the 4 years where the seats are empty? Or the year where the state can pass no state level legislation? (Both of those actually happened, hence the immense popular support by the states for adopting the 17th amendment)
Not to mention that the holdover/compromise from the original way things worked (replacement appointment by the Governor) resulted in perhaps the most famous recent example of executive misconduct by a Governor: Rod Blagojevich.
> And in the 4 years where the seats are empty? Or the year where the state can pass no state level legislation?
But whose problems are these? The people who elected the state legislators who did them, right? There is a preexisting solution for that problem.
The voters can vote for representatives who are willing to compromise and appoint a moderate, or they can vote for representatives who are willing to engage in brinkmanship and then get nothing, and either way they got what they voted for.
> Not to mention that the holdover/compromise from the original way things worked (replacement appointment by the Governor) resulted in perhaps the most famous recent example of executive misconduct by a Governor: Rod Blagojevich.
...who then went to prison. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
> But whose problems are these? The people who elected the state legislators who did them, right? There is a preexisting solution for that problem.
We see federal representatives rewarded for brinkmanship. What makes you think state level electorates would act differently? (And in fact I expect there's lots of examples of brinkmanship in state electorates as well, I just don't follow them closely).
A representation system that fails to represent is dysfunctional and should be changed. When the same system consistently fails to represent its constituency, for the same reason, across various constituencies at various times, you can no longer fault the people. The constituents should not be punished for being born into a dysfunctional system.
Don't place the founders on a pedestal. They made tons of mistakes. The 3/5ths compromise was terrible, but it was encoded into the constitution. We learned from it and improved. State managed senators, while less overtly awful, were still quite problematic. Celebrate that the constitution can be changed.
Or just have the legislatures vote. The two candidates with the higher number of votes get to represent that state. With some luck, every state will be represented by one Republican and one Democratic senator. That should help to remove some of the party politics out of the senate.
TL;DR: Just use range voting and put in the candidate with the highest rating. (Note that Senators' terms are staggered so there aren't two up from the same state at the same time, but if there were you could easily send the two with the highest ratings instead of the one.)
I'm not American, but if the Senate is meant to represent the states, then it makes sense to have them appointed by the states, or elected by the state legislatures (this is for example how the Dutch senate (Eerste Kamer) is elected, though it's still proportional to the population of the provinces, unlike the two per state no matter how big or small).
But if you want your country to be democratic and representing the people, then the people's representation (the House) should hold most of the power, and the representation of the states (the Senate) should only really be involved in states-related issues. For example, not being able to create laws, but only deciding whether an issue is a federal issue or a states issue.
Merely making senators appointed by states isn't going to fix all of the problems with the senate.
You missed the nuance of GP. If senators represent states, they should not be given the power to create laws about people, but instead only about the interactions between states, leaving laws about people up to the House.
This would make the Senate more akin to the Supreme Court, though empowered to craft legislation instead of just rule on existing issues.
Wow, this is the first time I have ever seen anyone other than me express this opinion.
I understand some of the reasons changes were made, look forward to reading the this thread!
My quick thoughts on the matter is that since the changes, people have stopped paying as much attention to local(State politics) and focus more on Federal politics.
Edit to add information to support my thoughts: Look at the disapproval rating for congress, around 64%. But a large majority are incumbents. The feeling I get when talking to people is that the Senator from state X is the worst but my Senator from state Y is perfect/has flaws but brings value to my state.
If everyone agrees about the major stuff, and you just need to finally make a decision on what color to paint the bike shed, democracy is great. A decision gets made, enough people are happy, and you move on.
But when you have real differences, you need a way to protect minorities against large coalitions of voters. Even if you aren't in a minority today, shifting politics (and divide-and-conquer politicians) will ensure that you are in a minority soon enough.
And it's even worse when society is polarized, because the coalitions form too quickly and too strongly.
But limiting the power of the majority is hard. The Constituion is genius because they recognized that and divded the power so many different ways. The protection of political minorities is much more important than the small amount of additional abstract fairness you get with direct elections.