I think we have far too much democracy in our republic today. Voting should be a privilege, not an automatic right. 18 is too young to vote (unless it's an active-duty military person). I think it should be raised to 25, perhaps even 30. No one working for the government should have the right to vote (save the military), because they're voting on their own jobs. A premier reason why DC was never meant to be able to vote. Neither should anyone receiving government welfare. I will concede to you drastic changes need to be made on voting, but I don't agree on the 17th repeal.
I love the Electoral College. Presidential electors are persons chosen by the campaign of the party’s presidential ticket to cast electoral votes for said ticket, and such electors give their word that they will vote for such ticket. The agency principle is very clear, and electors are proxies with a single job to do and clear instructions of how to do it.
On the other hand, when people elect members of the state legislature, they do so for all sorts of reasons, including whether they got funding to fix the potholes in their neighborhood and who they would be supporting for state house speaker. If such state representatives were to elect a U.S. Senator from the state, they would be acting based on their own whims and caprices, and *not* following the instructions of the voters, given that potential U.S. Senate candidates were not in the ballot, or even under consideration, when the election took place. I think that a Texas conservative should be able to decide for himself whether he wants Ted Cruz or RINO David Dewhurst as the state’s representative in the U.S. Senate instead of letting state legislators beholden to Dewhurst make the choice.State legislators are there to pass state laws, and in a representative democracy voters entrust legislators for such purpose, but the election of representatives to Congress, irrespective of whether it’s the upper or lower house, is a responsibility that belongs to the people alone.
When the Framers created a bicameral legislature, by far the most important distinction between the houses was that the Senate had equal representation among states while House members were apportioned by population. That equal representation was the most important attribute of the upper chamber should be obvious to anyone who has read the Constitution, given that Article V, which provides for the mechanisms to amend the Constitution, expressly forbids any amendment that would deny a state its equal representation in the Senate without such state’s consent. The only other constitutional clause that Article V prevented from being modified through amendment was the restriction on Congress banning the importation of slaves, but even that exclusion had a sunset provision. We could amend the Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College (which I would oppose with all my might), but we could not amend the Constitution to give California more Senators than Alaska unless Alaska consented.
The second most important distinction between the upper and lower chambers was that the Senate was supposed to be more deliberative, with its members serving staggered, six-year terms (so only 1/3 of Senators could be replaced in a single biennial election) while the House was more dynamic and susceptible to large-scale change and its members served for only two-year terms. The third distinction between houses—that senators were elected by the state legislature while representatives were elected by state residents with the same voting qualifications as that of the most numerous house of the state legislature—was a meatless bone tossed to members of the Constitutional Convention who were concerned that the new Constitution differed too much from the Articles of Confederation. The election of senators by state legislators resulted in corruption and malfeasance, and the overwhelming majority of state legislatures over a century ago decided to get rid of the system and replace it with the popular election of senators, as evidenced by the fact that the 17th Amendment was approved by 73% of legislatively appointed U.S. Senators and was ratified by 36 out of the 37 state legislatures that voted on it between 1912 and 1913 (all but Utah).
Our Constitution preserves federalism by having citizens of the states, qua state voters, elect members of Congress and presidential electors, and by limiting Congress to its enumerated and implied powers. We don’t need the abrogation of voting rights as a way to prop up federalism, because the states are composed of their people, not their legislators. It would be foolhardy to give up one’s right to vote for representatives to Congress so that a politician votes instead.
As for your preference for limiting the franchise to property owners, I agree wholeheartedly. And I would go a step further and deny the franchise to elected officials and other persons who work for the government (excluding active-duty military) or who receive welfare payments. Our representatives in Congress (and in the state legislature, for that matter) should be responsive to the private citizens who pay for the government, not to freeloaders or to people casting self-serving votes.