FUCK THE POLICE
10-04-2006, 06:27 PM
Do you agree with the seventeenth ammendment, which provided for the popular election of each senator in each state instead of the election by the state legislature?
My argument is personally for the ammendment, mainly because legislatures in America provide no sort of minority political representation, and therefore cannot represent the people. Whenever you go to the polls, the whole electorate votes, minority opinion or not. Then, whenever it's put through that abominable filter of winner-take-all districts, where the opinion in each district is roughly rounded to the largest opinion in the district, all indpendents are eliminated immediately. All blacks and other ethnicity groups are often eliminated unless the state was kind enough to gerrymander for them. The SMD system is also an odd one in that the majority opinion the state can LOSE the election - depending on how you drew the districts. So what we have left is a bunch of idiotic partisan assholes completely dependent on the largest opinion in the district - and because you only need 50% of the vote in each district to win, you only need to get 25% of the vote in the nation to get a majority in the legislature.
In the past, whenever we elected our senators this way, senatorship was always given out on a frivolous and partisan manner. If the winner-take-all filter of public opinion produced more
Republican and Democrats in one election because 3 or so districts flipped for 49% to 51% in their favor, the person was certain to be of that party. No independents were ever elected. Sometimes the seats were even given out as favors - for instance, a senate seat was given to a supreme court justice who just happened to be an indepent - because in the election of that year (the one that handed the election the Rutherford B. Hayes) an independent council was formed, to be composed of 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans, and 1 justice, which was to decide how a few disputed electoral votes were to be cast. Now, there was only 1 justice on the court who wasn't Republican, and he was given a senate seat over in Indiana as a favor. Therefore, there were now 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats on the council - not surprisingly, they gave every single disputed electoral vote to Rutherford B. Hayes, and he was elected. They even awarded South Carolina's and Florida's electoral votes to the Republicans - which is ridiculous, considering this was right after the civil war and these were solidly Democratic states.
So, I don't think that the election of senators by the legislature of the state would be a check against tyranny of the majority - it would simply make the entire process corrupt and completely inaccassible to the minority, and it would make them trinkets in a corrupt political game.
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My argument is personally for the ammendment, mainly because legislatures in America provide no sort of minority political representation, and therefore cannot represent the people. Whenever you go to the polls, the whole electorate votes, minority opinion or not. Then, whenever it's put through that abominable filter of winner-take-all districts, where the opinion in each district is roughly rounded to the largest opinion in the district, all indpendents are eliminated immediately. All blacks and other ethnicity groups are often eliminated unless the state was kind enough to gerrymander for them. The SMD system is also an odd one in that the majority opinion the state can LOSE the election - depending on how you drew the districts. So what we have left is a bunch of idiotic partisan assholes completely dependent on the largest opinion in the district - and because you only need 50% of the vote in each district to win, you only need to get 25% of the vote in the nation to get a majority in the legislature.
In the past, whenever we elected our senators this way, senatorship was always given out on a frivolous and partisan manner. If the winner-take-all filter of public opinion produced more
Republican and Democrats in one election because 3 or so districts flipped for 49% to 51% in their favor, the person was certain to be of that party. No independents were ever elected. Sometimes the seats were even given out as favors - for instance, a senate seat was given to a supreme court justice who just happened to be an indepent - because in the election of that year (the one that handed the election the Rutherford B. Hayes) an independent council was formed, to be composed of 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans, and 1 justice, which was to decide how a few disputed electoral votes were to be cast. Now, there was only 1 justice on the court who wasn't Republican, and he was given a senate seat over in Indiana as a favor. Therefore, there were now 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats on the council - not surprisingly, they gave every single disputed electoral vote to Rutherford B. Hayes, and he was elected. They even awarded South Carolina's and Florida's electoral votes to the Republicans - which is ridiculous, considering this was right after the civil war and these were solidly Democratic states.
So, I don't think that the election of senators by the legislature of the state would be a check against tyranny of the majority - it would simply make the entire process corrupt and completely inaccassible to the minority, and it would make them trinkets in a corrupt political game.
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