While waiting at the bus stop the other day an older gentleman put down his newspaper for a moment and asked me, “Wow the US Senate is messed up. How it did every get so bad?”
I told him that Article 1, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution says, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.” The 17th Amendment changed this to the popular vote system we have today and that was a mistake that needs to be fixed.
This is one of the most significant changes to the original document because it altered the balance of powers. The House is elected by the people, the Senate by the states, and the president by the Electoral College. This structure gave us a balance between the popular will of the people and the collective will of democratically elected representatives. Remember now, this is a republic, not a direct democracy. But the 17th Amendment changed the balance by tilting the scales in favor of the masses, which are made up of people who vote in depressingly low numbers who can’t name their state or local representatives and who hardly pay attention to politics but have no trouble at the ballot box thanks solely to the sample ballot they received on their way into the polls.
He said, “Huh?”
I continued by letting him know the Founders believed in a division of powers so that no one majority could dominate another. Federalist No. 62 says-
The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation.
The people would still have their voice heard as to who should be their senator at the federal level because they get to choose their state senator and their state delegate/representative. Those state representatives would then represent their constituents in their state’s own selection of senators. The people would of course still retain the popular vote for the House, but power of voting will be more evenly dispersed throughout the republic with the states getting their fair share through equal representation in the Senate.
While advocates of the 17th Amendment believed the people would be brought closer to the process, the opposite as been seen. State-wide elections are tough with a lot of geography to cover. Those campaigns have created an impersonal relationship with their potential voters as a candidate shots around a busy state. State legislators, on the other hand, have a much closer relationship with their constituents. State legislators have the opportunity to seek and receive feed back at a personal level and then answer to the responsibility of their choice as part of a voter’s consideration in the voting booth come re-election.
As I continued on I could tell that this guy’s surprise was not turning into curiosity, which didn’t really matter because I was not going to stop talking about how the 17th Amendment needs to be repealed so that our Republic can be restored.
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Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of Restore The Republic, Repeal The 17th Amendment.
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