I’ve spent a lot of time reporting on the tea party over the last year, finding some intriguing and positive elements to the movement, and some troubling and ugly aspects as well.<\/p>\n
But of all the actual ideas being put forward by conservative activists, the worst may be the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n
That was the amendment, ratified in 1913, that ended the practice of state legislatures choosing United States Senators. <\/p>\n
Before it was passed, voters had no direct involvement in choosing the 100 lawmakers who make up the most powerful legislative body in our country.<\/p>\n
For conservatives, there is a very clear logic to this step backward: empowering the states.<\/p>\n
If they have their way, the Senate won’t in fact reflect the will of the people, it will reflect the sovereignty and authority of the fifty individual US states.<\/p>\n
Tea Party activists also argue that the idea is worth reviving because that’s how the founding fathers wanted it.<\/p>\n
But let’s be clear: the founding fathers embedded a lot of terrible ideas in the Constitution, including slavery and the denial of voting rights to women.<\/p>\n
There are so many problems with the proposal to repeal the 17th amendment that it’s hard to know where to begin, but just for fun let’s start in Albany.<\/p>\n
If conservatives had their way, our state legislature — the most dysfunctional in the United States — would have sole authority to decide who represents us in Washington DC.<\/p>\n
This is a legislature that can’t even pass a budget, where scandals and indictments are an accepted part of the culture.<\/p>\n
And Albany is hardly unique. Legislatures from Alaska to Florida are no better. <\/p>\n
Anyone who thinks that corruption, backroom dealing, and gridlock are the solve provinces of our nation’s capital hasn’t been paying attention.<\/p>\n
What’s more there’s a lot of evidence that the old system worked horribly. <\/p>\n
State lawmakers often went years at a time without choosing a new Senator, leaving their people without national representation.<\/p>\n
From 1901 until 1903, the state of Delaware had no US Senators at all because the state’s legislature was stalemated over the question.<\/p>\n
There are some in our country who believe that the virtues of Federalism — a system that includes a far more decentralized national government — outweigh these problems.<\/p>\n
They are wrong.<\/p>\n
Under the current system, each state’s voters gets to make a choice about their representation. <\/p>\n
If they want to elect leaders who want a weaker national government and more state’s rights, they are free to do so.<\/p>\n
The US Senate is already the least representative legislature in any democracy in the world.<\/p>\n
Because it doesn’t grant seats based on population — instead, each state gets two seats regardless of size — small states like Vermont receive 38 times more clout in the Senate per capita than big states like New York.<\/p>\n
That’s already a huge redistribution of power.<\/p>\n
If we backtrack to an antebellum, good-old-boy system for choosing our lawmakers, then the Senate will have lost almost all connection to the people it represents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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