17th amendment

Mikel

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I often hear people lament that the popular election of state senators was a disaster for the republic, whereas before they would be elected by state legislatures. What does IBB think?
 
Mikel said:
I often hear people lament that the popular election of state senators was a disaster for the republic, whereas before they would be elected by state legislatures. What does IBB think?
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Intent was that the Senate was to represent the interest of the individual states, hence the assignment by the state gov't.

That died w/ the 17th amendment.

17th amendment was entirely about centralizing power to the feds, IMHO
 
Mikel said:
Switching from state legislatures to popular vote? I'm not sure I understand.
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rockota said:
yes. It means that the senate is no longer beholden to the states... they no longer represent state's interests.
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And to use the crayon flavor Mikel likes best, once the states have no interest represented, the federal government can grow unchecked.
 
I think the 17th amendment was written to rig the elections. Instead of having the people vote for who they want there was a selected set of individuals who were SUPPOSED to be picking.
 
Ksand said:
If they were picked by the state legislation the liberal ****holes would just screw us even harder
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what makes you say that? Senate is still only 2 reps/state... voters have more impact locally than federally...
 
rockota said:
Intent was that the Senate was to represent the interest of the individual states, hence the assignment by the state gov't.

That died w/ the 17th amendment.

17th amendment was entirely about centralizing power to the feds, IMHO
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Exactly this.

Once the Senators were selected by the easily manipulated population (and easily manipulated ballot-box), the state governments no longer had any say at the Federal level. The Federal Gov't was free to act completely independently from the states' desires. In combination with the 16th (granting the Feds the power to levy income tax), this was a HUGE, HUGE movement of power to the Fed Gov't.


Edit (had to look up the actual dates, I just remembered them being "close"):

16th Amendment passed Feb 3, 1913
17th Amendment passed Apr 8, 1913
 
rockota said:
what makes you say that? Senate is still only 2 reps/state... voters have more impact locally than federally...
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Density populated areas tend to be very liberal, and those heavily populated areas have more legislators. More liberal legislators picking the people they want = disaster for everyone
 
Agree. The next domino that ruined all of this was Reynolds v. Simms.

Prior to that ruling, the state senates were elected by county. Now its per-capita which allows heavily urbanized states to become one-party. It was by design. Another progressive ruling by the Warren court.
 
Ksand said:
Density populated areas tend to be very liberal, and those heavily populated areas have more legislators. More liberal legislators picking the people they want = disaster for everyone
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But sparsely populated states outnumber densely populated ones. That is why the GOP fares better in the Senate than the Demons... although they would fare better without the 17th. There are currently 6 split delegations, 4 or 5 of which would likely be GOP if their reps made the vote.
 
DRTDEVL said:
But sparsely populated states outnumber densely populated ones. That is why the GOP fares better in the Senate than the Demons... although they would fare better without the 17th. There are currently 6 split delegations, 4 or 5 of which would likely be GOP if their reps made the vote.
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I live in Hellinois and we can't out vote ****cago no matter how hard we try
 
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