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View Full Version : Do you agree with the 17th ammendment?



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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Damocles
10-04-2006, 07:33 PM
Ahhh... I see. You forgot the poll. I'll delete the other thread.

FUCK THE POLICE
10-04-2006, 08:11 PM
All the abolishing of the ammendment would accomplish is destroying any power minorities have in the nation, and making senators into useless partisan trinkets. The states still have say - it's just important that the PEOPLE of the state have the say, instead of the people who "represent" them.

FUCK THE POLICE
10-04-2006, 08:16 PM
For instance, I for one am not represented at any level of government I vote for. I would be automatically thrown out of the vote for the senator. The people who had power would all be the majority - those who want a theocratic nation, hate gays, and suck - of Mississippi, the minority would lose all opinion in the congealing winner-take-all mutation of will. It would almost certainly result in lower quality senators, who were elected for no other reason than to send pork to the state or other such frivolous reasons.

FUCK THE POLICE
10-04-2006, 08:30 PM
Whenever you elect someone in the SMD system, your opinion is already watered down to the majority. Sending things through another winner-take-all filter would diminish the power of whats already diminished. It's far easier to get a majority in a body that's only composed of the majority - having a body that's only composed of the majority of the majority would make things even worse. We'd have a bunch of lockstep homogenous senators.

Minister of Truth
10-04-2006, 11:34 PM
I think politicians were better before the amendment. And before the primary as well for that matter.

Furthermore, we would probably have much more closely followed state/local govt. and elections than we do now.

FUCK THE POLICE
10-05-2006, 06:02 AM
I think politicians were better before the amendment. And before the primary as well for that matter.

Furthermore, we would probably have much more closely followed state/local govt. and elections than we do now.

Well, the ammendment was pretty much pre-civil war politicians and the thirty years thereafter... I'm guessing you like that kind. It was an entirely different era in the nation, however, and the state governments were much larger than the federal government.

German and Swiss cantons do actually still elect their candidates for the regional upper house through the canton parliament instead of the people in the cantons. It's important, however, to note that the German and Swiss cantons do a much better job of representing the people of their state than the American ones, and do not merely serve to enhance tyrranny of the majority.