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Post #1107791

Author
Warbler
Parent topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1107791/action/topic#1107791
Date created
13-Sep-2017, 10:57 PM

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

*sigh* Why‽ Why do want to take are ability to vote for are US Senators away from us?

Do you elect all your judges? You may elect local judges, but many places do not, and you certainly don’t elect Federal judges. Do you elect the president’s Cabinet? Do you elect the parliamentarian? Do you elect who becomes Speaker of the House? Do you choose the president’s running mate when you nominate your party’s presidential candidate?

Senators are different than judges, parliamentarians, and the Speaker of the House.

There are so many roles we do not elect? It’s not like it undermines democracy. Repealing the 17th Amendment is one of the ways I favor the democratic republic government.

I don’t get how.

Consider this: a senator is elected for six years, while a congressperson is elected for only two; senators are always two per state, while congresspeople reflect the general population. These traits were part of the Great Compromise of 1787 to ensure that small states were not overpowered by large states. But wait a second! Now that the people elect these individuals directly, these traits do not match the power granted a senator.

How does how the Senators are elected alter the traits or anything about the Great Compromise?

Now a senator is nearly impossible to remove from office until he/she drops dead or decides to throw in the towel.

Senators can be defeated in elections. We can make it easier to remove US Senators from office if we need to without taking away the peoples’ right to vote.

More frequent elections allow for congresspeople to be replaced more readily.

fine, change the term limits for Senators. But still have them elected by the people.

Also, if the population itself, instead of the state government, directly elect senators, then what is the point of having two per state?

The founders decided that we needed one legislative body where all the states were represented equally.

We are not safeguarding the small states when we are granting the general population proportionally larger power than the large states. We are simply divvying out the power of everyone’s vote unfairly.

I am not understanding you here. Whether elected by the people or by state legislatures, the US Senate would still represents each state equally as the founders intended.

Now, look at the positives of having the state legislature make the call.

Yeah, US Senators win their seats by lining the pockets and kissing the a** of the members of the state legislatures and making corrupt deals. No thanks.

First, most people are set in their ways. Elections are decided almost entirely on the whims of the relatively few whose minds are not made up. The rest is left up to the enthusiasm of those committed to their worldview, whether they will get out and vote. But the end result on a large scale is what is called “the tyranny of the majority.”

Sorry, not following you here. Elections are decided by the voters, all of the voters.

Look at the referendum on the U.K.'s withdrawal from the EU. If you think about it, most people probably did not have their minds changed from the beginning to the end of the process.

So?

But a relatively few did, and thus determined what, in my mind, was an economic catastrophe for Europe.

No, the few that changed their minds plus those that already had their minds made up, determined things.

What is interesting about deliberative bodies instead of direct democracy is that policy change does not depend on the whims of a relative few.

Again direct democracy does not depend on the whims of a few, but the whims of all that vote. I don’t get why you think the people don’t matter just because they already have their minds made up. This confuses me.

People debate and make decisions they believe will be in the lasting interest of the people.

real honest debates in Federal and state deliberative bodies are far and few between. Most of the “debates” grandstanding and for show. They come in with their minds made up long before “debate” begins.

Those decision are not sudden, but rather systematic and slow. Indirect elections can actually put a brake on kneejerk reactions. Take a look at this article where “the majority” of Britons actually oppose Brexit now.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people-changed-minds-brexit-second-referendum-poll-finds-a7795591.html

53% to 47%, people now oppose it. Yet, that really represents the minds changing of only a relative few.

The point you are missing is that the few minds changed on matter because the numbers on both sides as a whole are very very close. This isn’t a few people deciding this, this is the whole of the country. If 90% had either voted to stay or voted to go, the minds of a few wouldn’t affect the decision at all.

The few had such an effect because the country was already just about split down the middle on the issue, and still are.

If we were to allow our state legislatures to have more of a role in the electing federal officers (i.e. senators), think of the positives. First, Americans would pay more attention to their local elections, making sure they put state legislators in place with whom they agree, and not simply voting for the president of their choice, and then marking all the members of the same party on the rest of the ticket.

Nothing is stopping the people from paying due respect to the local elections already. They are important enough already without the US Senate seats in the balance.

Second, it would allow for the legislators, who are more keenly aware of the states’ fiscal and policy needs than the average state resident, to elect a senator to represent the state government’s needs.

And I am sure state legislators would never ever put their own self interests or that of their party ahead of what was best for the state.

Remember, the state legislators are still directly elected. Now, they’ll actually be better able to perform their jobs because the federal senators would be answerable to them.

I’d rather the US Senators be answerable to the people than bureaucrats in the state legislators

And third, speaking of being answerable to them, if the senators get out of line, the state legislator could more easily remove them than we as a general population can.

Again we can make it easier to remove US Senators when necessary without taking away the peoples’ right to vote.

Fourth, those brakes I was talking about…senators would be less likely to make snap decisions based on the passing popularity of an item and would be more likely to represent the needs of the deliberative body on the state level.

But does that deliberative body always represent the will of the people of the state? I don’t think so.

It may seem counterintuitive, but I believe repealing the 17 Amendment would actually improve the legislative process on the state and federal levels.

I couldn’t disagree with you more.

You’ve also forgotten about the problem of gerrymandering. It is possible due to gerrymandering(and it can even happen with out it), that the party in control of a state legislator is not the party favored by the people of the state. I think this is true in Pennsylvania right now. The Republicans are in control of the state legislator, but I think the majority of the people are Democrats. If we did things your way, the state would have Republican US Senators, even though the people would want Democrat US Senators.