If everyone agrees about the major stuff, and you just need to finally make a decision on what color to paint the bike shed, democracy is great. A decision gets made, enough people are happy, and you move on.
But when you have real differences, you need a way to protect minorities against large coalitions of voters. Even if you aren't in a minority today, shifting politics (and divide-and-conquer politicians) will ensure that you are in a minority soon enough.
And it's even worse when society is polarized, because the coalitions form too quickly and too strongly.
But limiting the power of the majority is hard. The Constituion is genius because they recognized that and divded the power so many different ways. The protection of political minorities is much more important than the small amount of additional abstract fairness you get with direct elections.
And if there are "concerns about corruption" then investigate the corruption and put the perpetrators (if any) in prison.
It's strange to say this when you are proposing to take away their direct vote on the matter. If anything, the current system is what gives people the government they deserve, by having voted on it.
Not to mention that the holdover/compromise from the original way things worked (replacement appointment by the Governor) resulted in perhaps the most famous recent example of executive misconduct by a Governor: Rod Blagojevich.
But whose problems are these? The people who elected the state legislators who did them, right? There is a preexisting solution for that problem.
The voters can vote for representatives who are willing to compromise and appoint a moderate, or they can vote for representatives who are willing to engage in brinkmanship and then get nothing, and either way they got what they voted for.
> Not to mention that the holdover/compromise from the original way things worked (replacement appointment by the Governor) resulted in perhaps the most famous recent example of executive misconduct by a Governor: Rod Blagojevich.
...who then went to prison. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
We see federal representatives rewarded for brinkmanship. What makes you think state level electorates would act differently? (And in fact I expect there's lots of examples of brinkmanship in state electorates as well, I just don't follow them closely).
A representation system that fails to represent is dysfunctional and should be changed. When the same system consistently fails to represent its constituency, for the same reason, across various constituencies at various times, you can no longer fault the people. The constituents should not be punished for being born into a dysfunctional system.
Don't place the founders on a pedestal. They made tons of mistakes. The 3/5ths compromise was terrible, but it was encoded into the constitution. We learned from it and improved. State managed senators, while less overtly awful, were still quite problematic. Celebrate that the constitution can be changed.
So what if they do? It's what their constituents voted for. Who's to say brinkmanship is never an optimal strategy?
> A representation system that fails to represent is dysfunctional and should be changed.
So change it by voting for different state legislators.
> Celebrate that the constitution can be changed.
Just because something can be done doesn't make it a good idea.
If you're going to argue that "it's what their constituents voted for" you have to apply that evenly: the consituents got so fed up with this issue that they elected legislators who changed the constitution. No easy feat.
> So change it by voting for different state legislators.
They did, they made it such an issue that their legislators ended up ratifying a constitutional amendment.
> Just because something can be done doesn't make it a good idea.
This applies equally in both directions. "It was that way first" isn't a merit, especially when "It was that way first" also applies to slavery.
It's two different questions -- does the system do what the constituents want (possibly yes), and what do we as the present day constituents want? The answer to which is not, from what I can gather, the status quo.
> They did, they made it such an issue that their legislators ended up ratifying a constitutional amendment.
Technically they didn't. It was the then-appointed Senate who approved the amendment (and by and large without having been replaced with different people), and they only did so out of fear of rising populist sentiment and what would happen if there was a constitutional convention in that climate. So they were basically doing their job and moderating populist sentiment, but apparently the anti-populist safeguards weren't strong enough to constrain populist sentiment from weakening them even further in that way.
> This applies equally in both directions. "It was that way first" isn't a merit, especially when "It was that way first" also applies to slavery.
Your argument was "celebrate that the constitution can be changed" as if any change is inherently good. But change can make things worse too. Before there was slavery there was not slavery.
Your main criticism also seems to be that the seats were going vacant, so the solution I would offer would be to hold a popular election but only if there has been no appointment within six months. Then the seat can't go vacant long but you're not, in the common case, taking away the seat of the states in the federal government.
> Technically they didn't.
Yes, technically—and in every other way—they did.
> It was the then-appointed Senate who approved the amendment
No, it wasn’t. The Senate doesn't approve Constitutional Amendments, state legislatures do.
The Houses of Congress, together, can propose Amendments, but they aren't needed for that, either.
TL;DR: Just use range voting and put in the candidate with the highest rating. (Note that Senators' terms are staggered so there aren't two up from the same state at the same time, but if there were you could easily send the two with the highest ratings instead of the one.)
The 16th is the income tax one.
But if you want your country to be democratic and representing the people, then the people's representation (the House) should hold most of the power, and the representation of the states (the Senate) should only really be involved in states-related issues. For example, not being able to create laws, but only deciding whether an issue is a federal issue or a states issue.
Merely making senators appointed by states isn't going to fix all of the problems with the senate.
This would make the Senate more akin to the Supreme Court, though empowered to craft legislation instead of just rule on existing issues.
I understand some of the reasons changes were made, look forward to reading the this thread!
My quick thoughts on the matter is that since the changes, people have stopped paying as much attention to local(State politics) and focus more on Federal politics.
Edit to add information to support my thoughts: Look at the disapproval rating for congress, around 64%. But a large majority are incumbents. The feeling I get when talking to people is that the Senator from state X is the worst but my Senator from state Y is perfect/has flaws but brings value to my state.