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Nickel
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  • Register:12/10/2008 12:41 AM

Date Posted:12/10/2018 7:04 PMCopy HTML

As George Mason explained at the convention in Philadelphia:

We have agreed that the national Legislature shall have a negative on the State Legislatures — the Danger is that the national, will swallow up the State Legislatures — what will be a reasonable guard agt. this Danger, and operate in favor of the State authorities — The answer seems to me to be this, let the State Legislatures appoint the Senate …

Mason’s fellow delegates agreed, and his proposal passed unanimously. In granting state legislatures the responsibility for electing their respective senators, the Constitution ensured that states had a voice under the new system. Senators, as representatives of the states, could check any desire Congress might otherwise have to encroach on areas of governance properly belonging to the states. Thus, just as checks and balances among the branches of the national government — the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary — ensured that no one branch would accumulate too much power. Giving the states a voice in the Senate preserved the balance of power between them and the national government.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/10/reform-senate-needs-end-directly-electing-senators/

........

That’s right, we made another tweaking error when we changed to popular vote.  It doesn’t sound like a mistake, but what do we know about these candidates that come out of nowhere and leave the state if they fail to get elected.  Better to have our state legislature who we’ve seen in action, not just words, for years representing, or not, our interests be sent to Congress to the battle of ideas for the general welfare.

What goes around, comes around.
govols Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #1
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  • Register:01/17/2010 6:27 PM

Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:12/11/2018 9:17 PMCopy HTML

I would like to see it tried again. The Senate possibly would tend to be better guardians of the States' sovereignty if Senators answered to States' legislatures rather than to States' citizenries. I don't think any real harm would come of giving it a go again.

Nickel Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #2
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Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:12/12/2018 2:20 AMCopy HTML

Great! Who do we call? For just a few moments I want to take action to get something done, but if I wait just a little while to let all that would be necessary sink in, the action just floats away down the river to the ocean of no return. Licorice twist.
alaskaone Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #3
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  • Register:12/03/2008 3:25 AM

Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:12/12/2018 5:37 AMCopy HTML

Yes.


The formation fits with the intentions of the founding documents.  Senate represents the states, the House represents the people.  That's how it should be.


Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. The advantage of insinuations over hard arguments is that they bypass critical thought. No one can respond precisely to a charge that is utterly vague or to accusers who will envelope any reply in a poisonous fog of further insinuations. ~ David Warren, The Guardian There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time and that captures an important point. The more powerful the government becomes, the more people are willing to do in order to seize the prize, and the more afraid they become when someone else has control. ~ Glenn Harlan Reynolds “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve.” ― H.L. Mencken
Hayekian Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #4
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  • Register:12/05/2008 3:35 AM

Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:12/15/2018 2:46 AMCopy HTML

I agree - the selection of the Senators ought to have remained with the State legislatures.
govols Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #5
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Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:12/20/2018 10:47 PMCopy HTML

I don’t know if it was Aristotle or Plato, but in one of the great philosophical inquiries it was sort of boiled down that the true “polis” is limited. Beyond a certain size and scope you depart from the idea of a polis; beyond a certain size and scope you no longer have a community with a shared identity and a shared common good; beyond a certain size and scope the common good of the polis is no longer the focal point of policy among the ruling elite, but instead the focus becomes the continuance and longevity of the class of rulers no matter the consequences that befall the producers of goods. The republic, the democracy, the people—the polis--that the form of governance is established to benefit, becomes secondary to the form itself or to those few within it who command its force. Good governance, or at least governance that the bottom rungs will reverently buy into, requires that governance itself be limited to a place and a people who are identifiable from within and without as a single people. The United States was such a place, somewhat, for a time.

The Senate, in its original form, was a well-reasoned aspect of that notion. The Constitution as it was originally designed recognized the States as Sovereigns in and of themselves. For the most part, the States’ constitutions recognized the peoples and communities within them as Sovereign. The federal Charter, with its bicameral legislature, gave the People one voice, and their respective States yet another voice. The polis that constituted communities in a given State sent representatives to their State’s legislature to speak on their behalf. These same Peoples sent representatives to the general government’s legislature to represent their voice. The local voice went to the House, but their States’ voices went to the Senate. In this manner a hierarchy of representation was established that unified a vast collection of isolated communities to form up a single broader polis that was drawn up short of Empire. It was a freaky leap of faith, philosophy, and trust previously unmatched in the history of humanity.

There’s a huge ass essay available here that I’m not going to write right now, but the men who negotiated the Constitution were grounded in a tradition that few of us today even remember. Our ancestors went to great lengths to preserve for us a past that most of us bother little to remember, and fewer still to heed. In the forgetting we’ll learn history by repeating it.


Nickel Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #6
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Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:02/09/2019 1:05 AMCopy HTML

The Path to Give California 12 Senators, and Vermont Just One https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2019/01/readers-respond-how-make-senate-more-representative/579913/ Earlier this month, Eric W. Orts argued that the time has come to reevaluate the apportionment of the Senate. “Today the voting power of a citizen in Wyoming, the smallest state in terms of population, is about 67 times that of a citizen in the largest state of California,” Orts wrote, “and the disparities among the states are only increasing.” Orts proposed what he called a “Senate Reform Act,” legislation that would allocate one seat to each state automatically, and apportion another 60 seats based on population. Professor Orts’s “solution” puts us on a path to a European parliamentary model, where the United States becomes the Subordinate States of America. Under his plan, the Senate, being of the same makeup as the House, would become irrelevant within a decade and would be abolished. The electoral college would fall, and the president would become a prime minister. States would cease to be relevant political bodies—instead they would be merely administrative districts—and we would be subject to an all-powerful central government in Washington, D.C. ............... Well, they’re tinkering with the Senate. Seems a good time to make changes, and yet maybe the states should hope this is just a passing wind. I don’t like it, but then my state has less population than some cities.
Nickel Share to: Facebook Twitter MSN linkedin google yahoo #7
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Re:Should the Senate go back to the States?

Date Posted:02/09/2019 1:27 AMCopy HTML

Is it time to repeal the 17th Amendment? BY JOHN M. DEMAGGIO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 08/30/18 12:30 PM EDT  225 THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL 


https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/404337-is-it-time-to-repeal-the-17th-amendment



 The 17th Amendment to our constitution changed the way Senators are chosen to serve in the Congress. As ratified in the original constitution, Senators were chosen by state legislatures to serve for a term of six years, while Representatives in the House were to be chosen by direct vote of the people. This is the principle behind “Bicameralism” - two branches of the legislative body answering to two separate constituencies, the Senate to the elected state governments and the House directly to the people. The 17th Amendment changed this to provide for Senators being elected by the popular vote. There were two major arguments to justifying the ratification of the 17th Amendment. The first presumed the election process for Senators had become too corrupt. The second hinged on state legislature voting deadlocks resulting in delays for state representation in the Senate. A third minor factor presumed state legislatures were consumed with selecting a Senator. Todd Zywicki in his outstanding review of the 17th Amendment for the Cleveland State Law Review echoes the current analysis challenging the validity of these arguments. He summarized the majority of evidence concluding: “…there is no indication that the shift to direct elections did anything to eliminate or even reduce corruption in Senate elections.”  “…Deadlocks were exceptional…the great majority of Senate elections were conducted without incident.” and “…the truth was that most legislatures took one vote at the beginning of each day and continued with their normal affairs.” The Anti-Federalist Papers informs us that James Wilson stated “…one branch of the General Government, the Senate or second branch, was to be appointed by the State Legislatures. The State Legislatures, therefore, by this participation in the General Government would have an opportunity of defending their rights.”  James Madison, in the Federalist Papers confirms this view that “The Senate on the other hand will derive its power from the States…” Zywicki further clarified that “By making the House and Senate accountable to different constituencies, the Framers [of the constitution] sought to thwart special interest…or ‘fractions,’ to pervert the legislative process…” ............... There’s more to the argument and the answer is yes, but I wish they had not used a question no one is asking.

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