At this point I think we’d be better off even if split legislatures were to pick one from both parties.
However, selling the idea of taking people’s vote for senator away is an incredibly high hurdle. Last summer Pete Hoekstra made the comment that he would like to get rid of the 17th amendment and the democrats went rabid screeching about him wanting to TAKE YOUR VOTE AWAY!!!!
You might be able to convince people to vote for senators by congressional district and the one who takes the most districts wins. You might actually be able to sell that if you can show how it puts control back into the hands of the individual states.
Thanks for the comment, but rats aren't that stupid. They're too concentrated in big cities.
It’s true that once a right is given to a voter, it is near impossible to take it back. The right to vote is a positive right. The right for the federal government to define ‘income’ however they wish and take it from the citizenry is a negative right.
However, we can amend the Constitution to allow state legislatures to recall their wayward US Senators thereby holding them to account to state interests. And I doubt recalls would occur often because just the threat of a recall should be enough for a Senator to get the message.
Between a risk of being primaried by voters or recalled by state legislatures, US Senators should be expected to act more responsibly to their states and constituencies.
We have got to harden ourselves to democrats going rabid and screeching. There is no good reason that technique should work so damn well for them.
We can hope and dream for all of these remedies to happen, but the truth is that nothing will be done to fix this country until some very unpleasant things occur. I don’t know if that is another mass secession and/or civil war, a devastating war with external forces, a truly staggering economic blow, or some kind of unknown biological outbreak. I’m not Nostradamus, nor am I hoping for any of this. I just know that there are too many people in this country who don’t want to make any changes from our current path.
You might be able to convince people to vote for senators by congressional district and the one who takes the most districts wins. You might actually be able to sell that if you can show how it puts control back into the hands of the individual states.
My idea is that we should change the terms of senators from six years to either four or eight years - and make the senator the running mate of the gubernatorial candidate. Thus, there would be only one election every four years, and a single vote would determine the senatorial as well as the gubernatorial result. So your vote wouldn’t be taken away, but the governor couldn’t pass the buck to the federal government if his own running mate voted for an unfunded mandate which hurt the people of the state. I would say make the senatorial decision of a single senator for the next 8 years at each gubernatorial election - except that the governor would have the power to take up the senate seat after four years, at his option. That way the governor would be responsible for senatorial performance.