Why Your Vote Hasn’t Mattered Since 1913

>> Legislatures want one thing -- money -- and a Conservative Senator favoring austerity and fiscal responsibility would stand in the way of them getting federal largesse. <<

Darn, there's goes fieldmarshaldj with those pesky facts again!

The anti-17thers saying we can simply vote out our state legislators if they choose bad Senators likewise ignored his comment about state legislatures being gerrymandered so we CAN'T vote out our state legislator regardless of how awful they are (just like fieldmarshaldj, I am gerrymandered into a black urban district. The majority of the district is in the suburbs and 53% of suburban residents voted for a Republican state senator. We didn't get one because the SMALL portion of the district in Chicago is in an overwhelmingly Democrat neighborhood in the inner city that gave 95% of their votes to the Democrat candidate, thus ensuring that the Democrat's got 56% of the vote "district wide")

They likewise go ballistic about how the U.S. Senate was changed from what the founders envisioned, but totally ignore the fact that STATE Senates were ALSO radically changed from what the founders envisioned, and every since the "one man, one vote" Supreme Court ruling, state senates represent population interests INSTEAD of geographic interests, which means corrupt city politicians dominate most of them. Interesting we never see the anti-17ths demand a repeal of THAT so state senates would resemblence their federal counterpart and only have ONE senator per county. My state senate would be far less corrupt if Crook County only got ONE senator instead of HALF of them.

>> So you are incapable of moving? <<

Ah, the ol' "if you don't like your state legislature, MOVE!" answer.

The same can be said to the anti-17thers. Not happy with the way your federal government is chosen? You are free to move to one of the MANY countries with an appointed upper house. The UK has such a system with hundreds of members of the House of Lords (I believe over 800 at last count) selected by career politicians to serve in that body, and the voters and public have ABSOLUTELY NO SAY in the matter. Public opinion polls overwhelmingly show that everyone there loathes the system and wants an elected upper house, but they are prevented from doing so by the Lords who want to keep their cushy appointed jobs. You are free to move there and tell them how much better than have it than us Americans with our sucky elected Senators like Mike Lee. I'm sure you can enlighten them all about how the corrupt career politicians select better Lords behind closed doors than the public ever would by electing them.

Another fun fact: Just like in the United States prior to the passage of the 17th amendment, the easiest way to be appointed to a lifetime job in the upper house of the UK is to simply bribe a bunch of powerful politicians in charge of vetting new members.

Yes, for the low, low cost of a several yearly £2 million donations to top Labour Party leaders, you too can give the great “honour” of becoming a member of the House of Lords, where they will undoubtedly select YOU because you are much wiser and more qualified than ANYONE the lowly peasants would have elected in your place, and certainly NOT because you gave them wads of cash to get the job.

And if the people DISLIKE the job you’re doing in the House of Lords (perish the thought! YOU represent the states instead of “mob rule”), then they can simply vote out the powerful gerrymandered British politician who gave you that job, even though the whole reason he appointed your corrupt butt in the first place is he’s an safe entrenched incumbent who won’t suffer any ramifications for his actions.

Ain’t appointed Upper Houses WONDERFUL?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_for_Honours

The people of the 50 states. House seats are allotted by state. Would you argue the US Representatives from Kansas don’t represent Kansas?

Interested in becoming a LORD in the Upper House of the UK government? Thanks to a 100% appointed upper house in our country, we have HUNDREDS of vacanies available! (and if not, we can ALWAYS create MORE!) Call 1-800-BUYALORDSHIP today! Our operators are standing by. All major credit cards accepted! ( DISCLAIMER: If you are unable to name at least five close family members or friends who have donated AT LEAST £1 million per year to a major political party in the UK, please refrain from calling. We require no further information from you. )

In my case sprouting wings and taking flight would be easier than voting out my state legislators because like millions of people I’m in a heavily rat district. Republicans don’t even RUN for state leg here.

My vote for US Senator is the only vote for a legislative office that I have at any level of government that might make a difference. My pig state Reps can have my Senatorial vote over my dead body, do you understand?

And do not say “move”. That’s taking the argument off into an irrelevant tangent.

You might have a point about “special interests” if state legislators weren’t just as beholden to “special interests” as Congress, which they are.

Voting is over the heads of most Americans. They are allowed to vote anyway. I’d love to restrict the franchise. You make a great case for that, but not for taking away my vote for Senator and giving it to some jerk who was elected by those same idiots.

I’m telling you, repealing 17 would NOT (shout!) result in a better class of Senators but worse because those people in state legislatures, Rollo, there are politicians, they are ***holes like all politicians! Look at all the examples of a few RINOs (or 1 RINO in the case the TN House a few years ago) teaming with democrats to control legislative chambers, Alaska right now has a “GOP” Majority and a democrat Speaker. This could happen in almost every Senate race in a Republican. 60% of the GOP legislators in say, Arizona might decent on a decent nominee. Nothing is stopping the rest of them from voting with dems to put in Megan McCain.

I’ll whatever pitfulls occur in direct elections over that backroom horsecrap any day.

This discussion is academic of course because (and you seem to agree) this will not happen or even be seriously considered. Perhaps we’re all being too testy I’m just frustrating for having circular discussions on this topic for **years**.

May had a golden opportunity to put Lords repeal on the agenda, it would have helped her in the election.

A UK freeper or someone made the case for bring back hereditary Lords, people raised to play that role. Obviously that won’t happen.

Canadian Senate is similar, appointed by the PM (by the Governor-General on the “advise” of the PM). “Advise” of the PM is like “advice” from Don Vito Corleono, it can hardly be refused.

Australia has an elected Senate. But the election system is that stupid singe transferable vote which results in several weird small parties holding the balance of power.

STV sounds good on paper but look at Ireland (used for the lower House) and look at the Australian Senate, the system sucks.

Ireland Senate is indirectly elected.

Really I see no point in having an upper House in a Westminster-style parliamentary system, it just gets in the way. Save Australia they all have power that’s been limited to the point of pointlessness and a complete lack of legitimacy.

In my opinion represent my state better than my legislators do so I don’t need them to act as middlemen.

The people of the states are “the states” as far as I’m concerned is I guess my point.

More oligarchy would not be helpful to the cause of good government.

Now you hit on the sole point in favor of your arugment.

We have more legislatures right now so we could have more Senators than we currently do.

We also wouldn’t have controlled the Senate from the 30’s until this century.

Not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars now spent on Senate races would instead flow to those state leg races and effect the outcome.

Short term, theoretical partisan advantage is to me, certainly not enough. If it looks like the GOP will have permanent state leg dominance the argument becomes stronger.

My first sentence in post 108 should be

"In my opinion I represent my state better than my legislators do so I don’t need them to act as middlemen."

>> Really I see no point in having an upper House in a Westminster-style parliamentary system, it just gets in the way. Save Australia they all have power that’s been limited to the point of pointlessness and a complete lack of legitimacy. <<

Eh, they've gutted most of the power of the House of Lords, but they still have the ability to slow down the passage of bills and amend them. I agree with the Coolidge philosophy that its better to kill bad bills than pass good ones, so I suppose its a good thing if it stops the government (regardless of which party is in power) from hastily passing too much knee-jerk legislation. Too bad the House of Lords can't kill bills outright anymore. In theory they could have stopped something like gay marriage regardless of the social pressure to pass it.

Still, the biggest problem is the Lords themselves, the whole body is basically a bunch of elitist aristocrats who want a cushy useless government job, so that's why so many Britons resent it.

I still like the unique, one-of-a-kind Tricamerial system I first proposed when I was 19 and a freshman in my college political science class: 1) House of Commons, 2) House of Representatives, 3) House of Senators. The lowest house, the Commons, is drafted into service "jury duty style" from a pool of ordinary Americans (like jury duty, they'd carefully vet them and eliminate any incompetent bozos, wackjobs, or obviously biased people with an axe to grind from serving). They'd serve a single 1-year term in government and would not be eligible to serve a second consecutive term. During that time their main job would be to serve as a check and balance over the other two houses and amend their legislation. (I'd probably also give them line item veto power, so they could remove individual parts of a bill, but not veto the entire bill) They could introduce bills of their own and send them to the other two houses for consideration, but they couldn't actually enact any legislation from any house (including their own). The other two houses could overrule any decision of the House of Commons by a 2/3rds vote. The power of impeachment would be solely in the House of Commons. Since they were drawn from the general population, unlike the other two houses, the members would have civilian jobs like teachers, bartenders, cab drivers, retail sales, etc., instead of all being lawyers and millionaire businessmen, and they'd be barred from taking money from lobbyists. That means they'd probably introduce legislation the other two houses would never start on their own accord. They'd elect a Commons Speaker from their own members, the same way a jury elects a jury foreman. I imagine a small body of about 50 legislators. Probably best to avoid cameras of their proceedings or it would turn into Reality TV show type spectacle.

Vote splitting per say is not much of an issue with Ireland’s proportional representation.

The leftists have never formed the Government in Ireland but Fine Gael, in the rare occasion they were in power, always had to be in coalition with Labour. Fianna Fail had to rely on the Greens last time they were in charge.

Now the first in history there is a Fine Gael minority government (not a coalition other than a few independents in the cabinet) being supported on confidence matters by Fianna Fail (they abstained in the PM vote allowing the new homo PM to win).

Irish civil war is the reason yeah, our civil war is the same reason Southern conservatives stayed in the rat party so long but at least there was the racial issue to keep them apart. In Ireland today the only difference seems to be cultural/cosmetic. FF is more populist than FG, long history of corruption. It’s like I don’t know Jeb Bush (FG) vs. Chris Christie (FF). Enough dime store analysis!

As for Poland, one dude who seemed to know what he was talking about made the Polish parties sound more like the Irish ones than 2 truly conservative parties, Civic Platform loves the EU and Law and Justice IIRC has a poor fiscal record and is otherwise worse than Civic platform which wasn’t that great itself really. That according to this guy. I’ll see later if I can find that post. Still better than the left.

In this country if the dems stayed none-socialist you would 100% have had the Progressive party. And the GOP/Dems would be forced to merge (or adopt the Aussie instant runoff) to beat them or else one party or the other would have shrunk to the point of near irrelevancy like the old UK Liberals did after being supplanted by Labour. UK was practically a two-party system again from the end of WW2 until the right wing of Labour broke off to form the Social Democrats, immediately teaming with and soon merging with the Liberals.

An aside but what happened to the UK Liberal party after classical liberal Gladstone (Cleveland) was extremely similar to what happened with the rats at the same time period. Except over there far left unions went and formed there own party and overtook the Liberals.

With so many idiots in this country I don’t see how the left could have been kept from having one of the major parties.

The Republicans were always aligned with enterprise and American industry heavily favored tariffs back in the day, farmers (exporters) opposed them. When it was clear free trade was better for a modern economy is when the Republicans became free trade.

Now only a few niche industries favor protectionism, like textiles. Some of the freepers loudest for protectionism today would have been railing against it back when it was bad for the cotton industry.

Grover C and the Bourbons were (unlike Wilson and modern rats) I believable genuinely non-interventionist, quite a change from manifest destiny I don’t know the nuances of why that occurred. Cleveland pulled Harrison’s Hawaii annexation treaty (and given what Hawaii became turns out he was right to do it! Though at time I’m sure I’d have agreed with Harrison)

If the Lords could still kill they’d certainly kill brexit.

” the biggest problem is the Lords themselves”

Yes. But their manner of appointment is the reason they are all pigs. Appointed by the “Monarch” on the “Advise” of the PM. Who does the PM appoint? Cronys who give money of course.

When the Lord’s blocked “The People’s budget” (exactly what it sounds like) in 1909 the then Liberal PM threatened to “advise” the King to appoint as many new peers as needed to pass it. The Lords backed down and shortly after the Commons passed the act cutting their balls off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1911

You told me about your House of Commons idea, I like it, it’s very interesting. Something like that might work and could be a good thing. I’d like to try it out in a heavily Republican state where we could be sure there wouldn’t be a lot of lib idiots selected. I would probably call them the House of Tribunes after the Ancient Roman office.

Exactly.

They’d put McCain’s widow or daughter in his seat, I can almost guarantee that.

given that potential U.S. Senate candidates were not in the ballot, or even under consideration,

The exception being 1858 Illinois when the GOP held a convention and nominated Lincoln and the dems were certain to stick with Douglas. I'm sure there must have been other such cases.

Ironically, the GOP candidates won the popular vote for leg, implying Lincoln would have won a direct election, but dems retained a narrow majority of seats.

Of course even a GOP legislature would not have been bound to elect Lincoln just cause a state convention selected him.

Before the 17th some states started having non-binding elections and the legislatures ratified the choices. The people were really DEMANDING this reform. There was no way it wasn't gonna happen.

Very much agree with restricting the franchise. Welfare recipients especially shouldn't be able to vote. Going back up to 21 (or even a little higher maybe) isn't a bad idea either. I'm 35 now (as of Oct 6th, Can you can step aside Mike Pence? ;) ) so I no longer care whether young people can vote as I once did, I was so unhappy I was only 17 in 2000.

“No taxation without representation!”

That was a popular phrase during the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. Colonists thought it was unfair to be taxed and subjected to English rule without consent.

That slogan was also abject propaganda. The colonists actually didn't want representation in the British Parliament, where they would constitute a distinct minority—only to be overruled by the majority in virtually every instance.

But propaganda is a useful tool in war, and that phrase served the Patriots' purpose at the time...

I was 18 in 2000 and voted, for all the good it did.

The people are represented by the people’s house—the House of Representatives.

The States were represented by the Senate—until that was changed and the US Senate became 100 Super Representatives - and now the individual State governments do not have their check or balance in the Federal Government.

"Just like in the United States prior to the passage of the 17th amendment, the easiest way to be appointed to a lifetime job in the upper house of the UK is to simply bribe a bunch of powerful politicians in charge of vetting new members."

As opposed to special interest?

After the 17th: Robert Byrd - 51 years; Daniel Inouye - 49 years; Strom Thurmond - 47 years Ted Kennedy - 46 years... and many more.

"We have more legislatures right now so we could have more Senators than we currently do."

Ideology was a little blurry in a lot of ways. You had Blue-Yellow dogs. You had "liberal" Republicans and "Conservative" democrats. Lines are clearer now which is why Repubs control a large percentage of State Legislatures.

Fiscal policy (Including under so called "Conservative" control) has been embarrassing since voting rights expanded and populism emerged (Electoral College is be targeted again). Frankly all your arguments are moot points based on this fact. Founders instilled gridlock on purpose and understood the power of "factions", thus restricted the process away form "Democracy" and more into Representation through multiple tiers to make the process slow as possible.