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samcol · 12-20-2005, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutulu

You cannot change it back to state appointing Sentators. It would be a potential disaster. With creativitiy and the right people placed in power it's possible to draw districts so that one party can dominate the elections. Say you have a state with 1M people where 60% vote party A and 40% vote party B. For simplicity, let's say there are only 5 districts. Each district has 200,000 people. It's easy to see that 3 state reps should be from A and 2 should be from B. However, party B gets the districts drawn in their favor and look what happens:

Code:

District	 A 	 B 	Total
1	 180,000.00 	 20,000.00 	 200,000.00 
2	 80,000.00 	 120,000.00 	 200,000.00 
3	 80,000.00 	 120,000.00 	 200,000.00 
4	 80,000.00 	 120,000.00 	 200,000.00 
5	 180,000.00 	 20,000.00 	 200,000.00 
Total	 600,000.00 	 400,000.00 	 1,000,000.00

Now instead of having 3 from A and 2 from B it is switched. Now the minority party gets to put their sentators in office and the whole system has been fucked.

One of the first things we should do is we should re-draw all congressional districts. Absolutely no voting data should be used during this process.

I don't see how there would be any disaster by letting states choose. This argument really has nothing to do with how districts are drawn up. US Senators were supposed to be representative of the States and not the population (think of how we pick the president based on States and not really by the most votes in the country). Population is already represented by the House. There needs to be a balance of power by the States.

Here's an article I found. It's long so here are the best points:

Quote:

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/09/...7th.amendment/
Ultimate power in a democracy resides with the people. We are not a pure democracy, however, but rather a confederated republic (one that features, as well, county and local political subdivisions).

Thus, while there is national sovereignty, there is also state sovereignty. Power has been so divided and spread for one reason: to provide for and protect the highest sovereignty -- that of each individual citizen......

.......James Madison was not only involved in structuring the system, but was also a keeper of its contemporaneous record. He explained in Federalist No. 10 the reason for bicameralism: "Before taking effect, legislation would have to be ratified by two independent power sources: the people's representatives in the House and the state legislatures' agents in the Senate." The need for two powers to concur would, in turn, thwart the influence of special interests, and by satisfying two very different constituencies, would assure the enactment was for the greatest public good.....

....Fortunately, Professor Zywicki offers an explanation for the amendment's enactment that makes much more sense. He contends that the true backers of the 17th amendment were special interests, which had had great difficultly influencing the system when state legislatures controlled the Senate. (Recall that it had been set up by the framers precisely to thwart them.) They hoped direct elections would increase their control, since they would let them appeal directly to the electorate, as well as provide their essential political fuel -- money.
This explanation troubles many. However, as Zywicki observes, "[a]though some might find this reality 'distasteful,' that does not make it any less accurate."

In my opinion reovoking the 17th would be the easiest and best way to clean up a major source of corruption. Districting has nothing to do with this argument.