Sasse proposes ending direct election of U.S. senators

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Omaha World Herald

Joseph Morton

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ben Sasse proposed a slew of major changes to the Senate this week — including a repeal of the Constitutional amendment that provided for direct election of its members.

The Nebraska Republican said in an interview that he recognizes it could take many years to implement the major overhaul he has in mind.

“So we’re going to need to tell the truth about the fact that the Senate is a dysfunctional institution to be able to get enough ideas on the menu that you can start to figure out where you’d forge consensus,” Sasse told The World-Herald.

He unveiled his ideas in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, writing that the founding fathers would be shocked at the current state of affairs.



“The Senate in particular is supposed to be the place where Americans hammer out our biggest challenges with debate,” Sen. Ben Sasse wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “That hasn’t happened for decades — and the rot is bipartisan.”

ANNA REED/THE WORLD-HERALD

Read more: https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/sasse-proposes-ending-direct-election-of-u-s-senators/article_ad1f0116-d3ec-5248-932a-b48c5e231525.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

[dchill]

1. The rot is Russian.

[Evolve Dammit]

21. x1000

[avebury]

2. It is dysfunctional because McConnell

refuses to do anything.

[Rebl2]

55. Exactly!

[vlyons]

3. That's stupid and undemocratic idea

The senate is disfunctional because Republicans have suppressed and gerrymandered the vote. Also rural states with less population - far less population get as many senators as California, Texas, Florida, NY etc.

If anything, we should get rid if the electoral college.

[ashredux]

6. Exactly

[SharonClark]

9. Agree 100%

[onetexan]

26. +1 K&R - Rotten Cotton is a hick who went to Harvard & came out an Idiot.

[PSPS]

37. Gerrymandering plays no role in senate elections. But the senate is certainly unrepresentative.

[marie999]

39. The Electoral Collage does not have anything to do with the election of senators.

[Jose Garcia]

47. How do you "gerrymander the vote" to affect the Senate?

[ashredux]

4. It's not the structure or how elected...it is the fact people elected crooks who took Russian$

[Augiedog]

5. He also wants democrats declared 7/8s human.

[groundloop]

24. I thought it was 3/5ths

[BamaRefugee]

7. As long as we're turning back the clock, return Nebraska to Native Americans

[NCDem47]

12. Good one.

[Evolve Dammit]

23. all the states. The white murderers and rapists coming in "caravans" have failed. Give it all back.

[mountain grammy]

52. Yep!

[SharonClark]

8. Let the gerrymandered legislatures decide?

Another brilliant republican idea. Not!

[CurtEastPoint]

16. EXACTLY!

[turbinetree]

10. trying to bring the good old days right Sasse....don't want to be held accountable by voters

like helping a traitor get off for his criminality are you still concern that you also have 190,000 + deaths on your hands......................resign............you help make it dysfunctional......

Maybe you should read the book Master of the Senate.............and not the #Moscow Mitch version.........

[NNadir]

11. The indirect election of Senators resulted in failure of Abraham Lincoln to become a Senator.

On the other hand, the direct election of Senators allowed an unpatriotic thug, who refused to hear evidence in the Impeachment of a criminal because of politics and who has supported the subversion of the Constitution by his owner, Putin owned Moscow Mitch, to become a Senator.

It's a mixed bag, I guess. No Lincoln in the Senate, but a Sasse instead.

The current Senate is controlled by a single man with an iron grip and a clear and present hatred of the US Constitution as it is. Sasse is totally in lock step with that thuggery.

The Republicans are reactionary, but their real goal, apparently, is to return the Constitution to what it was before the passage of the 13th amendment, where venal morally vapid people ran the country and had the "freedom" to treat human beings like farm animals.

[DownriverDem]

13. We voted for a

committee to draw the new district lines after the 2020 census. Michigan is very gerrymandered.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. The rot is Ben Sasse. Don't tinker with my Constitution

Direct election of Senators? We tried that. Inside deals in state legislatures. Permanent non-competitive party politics.

All we have to do is publicly fund, and limit the money spent on politics. Equalize free speech in other words.

[lagomorph777]

15. Get rid of the Senate. It is designed to advantage slave states (red states today).

[RicROC]

35. totally agree with you!

[PSPS]

38. Many senators have suggested the same thing.

A parliamentary system is far better but it will never happen here.

[marie999]

40. You need 2/3 of the Senate to vote to abolish the Senate. Not going to happen.

[ck4829]

46. OK. Why is that important? Sasse's thing isn't going to happen either.

Last time I checked, brainstorming and hypotheticals do not put an extra load on the servers, right?

[lagomorph777]

50. Yeah I know.

Another hole in the Constitution.

[NYC Liberal]

59. 2/3 of state legislatures can bypass Congress to propose amendments.

Still not going to happen though.

[usaf-vet]

17. TERM F...ing LIMITS!!!!

I know there are dozens of arguments against term limits BUT tRump and the current cowardly (blackmailable?) Senators have made it clear in my mind that I am VERY willing to give up a good Senator two to eliminate DOZENS of sycophants who are unwilling or unable to do their F..ing job to be the checks and balances for a run away treasonous POTUS or the MoscowMitch's in the political world.

Sadly my guess is the even today after the "loser and suckers" story and now the Woodward revelations there would STILL BE NOT ENOUGH vote to IMPEACH this SOB.

[TreasonousBastard]

18. Well, he does have a point-- the Senate is now useless because of a few thousand people in...

Kentucky got Frogface elected.

Those few thousands added to the thousands of others who gave us a Republican majority are the problem.

The House had this problem years ago and stripped the Speaker of a lot of power, so the realistic(?) answer is to strip the Senate majority leader of much of his power.

There is a reason why Montana or Rhode Island should have the same number of Senators as California (although it's not as good a reason as it was in 1789 and might possibly be revised) but this does give the less populated states excessive power. When an intransigent majority leader uses this to retard government, it is close to criminal.

Should we win the Senate this election, let's make it a priority that the majority leader cannot use his power to hold judges from votes, legislation from being debated, and other anti-democratic activities.

[rso]

19. Sasse

Sure, as soon as democrats win the majority of State Governorships, let’s go with Sasse’s proposal.

[rwsanders]

20. Wrong direction. I have an idea to fix HOR (gerrymandering) and Senate (disproportionate)

At large elections for both house and senate.

First we need to remove the cap on the number of representatives, get rid of large staffs for representatives, then if a state gets 25 reps, then the ENTIRE state picks their top 25.
Same for the senate. The ENTIRE COUNTRY votes for 100 senators. The top 100 serve.
In both cases, the would be assigned to districts and states.
This may not be a perfect system, but I think it would sneak through with bipartisan support, dilute the over representation of the right wing states and eliminate the problem of gerrymandering in one fell swoop.

Please tell me what you think. I'm considering getting this on the White House petition website. I think it has the advantage of playing to the rights belief that they are a majority.

[obamanut2012]

27. No.

[rwsanders]

29. Why?

Statistic show that democratic voters far outnumber those on the right, but the senate and gerrymandering have given them way too much power.
To me this is a step closer to direct democracy and quickly eliminates some of the inequities in a way that would be acceptable to both sides.

[marie999]

41. First, gerrymandering has nothing to do with voting for senators

and second you are not going to get 2/3 of senators to vote to change the way they are elected.

[rwsanders]

48. Didn't say it had anything to do with the senate. But it would break up the advantage

the republicans have in the number of primarily rural states. I've read Wyoming has 800k people, but 2 senators. CA has millions, and only 2 senators. At large would break that up.
I believe they would vote for it believing that they have a majority. I believe the right is that delusional.
But overall, the point is what would balance the system, what should we be working toward, where can we apply pressure, not what will work with the people that are there would do. Because first, that is trying to predict the future and secondly, if we are going to only tolerate the freedom they are willing to grant, NOTHING is going to change. As you can see by the OP, they are hoping to consolidate their power and make a republican majority of the senate a permanent feature of life in the states.

[cstanleytech]

22. The only change that should be done to Senate elections is that to win a new term the Senator has to

win by 10% more than they did the last time they won.
In other words if they won by 50% they need to win 60% if they decide to run again and the amount needed to win another term increases each time.
That way it would force them to work for the majority of the people in their district rather than a small base of people that they can rally to support them.
In fact it should also be adopted by the elections for House members as well as then maybe we will see more of them working for us rather than themselves.

[marie999]

42. Another change in the Constitution that will not get the backing of 2/3 of the Senate.

[cstanleytech]

51. Of course not because many of them have a vested interest in never seeing such a change happening,

[Lonestarblue]

25. Republicans have been trying to turn back the clock for decades.

What the want is to eliminate all amendments to the Constitution except the 2nd. Then they would be free to establish the right-wing Christian religion as the state religion and the law of the land, and only white male property owners would be allowed to vote.

Sasse’s proposal ties into something I’ve read by Republicans for a few years without really understanding the distinction they were trying to make and that is an emphasis on the US as a republic, not a democracy. It’s true that we are not a direct democracy where citizens vote on laws, but I think Republicans are working on the idea of more power being in the hands of state legislatures. Prior to the 17th Amendment, it was the state legislatures that selected senators. It appears that Sasse wants to return to those days, where corruption and patronage were the game. The state legislatures are a huge part of the problem with the Electoral College because most states award all their EC votes to the popular vote winner instead of apportioning votes based on actual vote counts, thus representing the minority votes. If all states moved away from winner take all, we would have better representation of the overall popular vote winner.

[SamKnause]

28. Fuck off !!!

The rot is not bipartisan.

Mitch McConnell is to blame for the rot.

The former republican party is to blame for the rot.

The Trump party is to blame for the rot.

Choosing party over country is to blame for the rot.

The anti science agenda is to blame for the rot.

The interference of religion is to blame for the rot.

Protecting corporations to the detriment of U.S. citizens is to blame for the rot.

Pretending Wall Street is the economy is to blame for the rot.

Citizen's United is to blame for the rot.

The attack on unions is to blame for the rot.

Fuck off, just fuck the hell off.

[smb]

30. The Senate Needs To Be Rolled Back To A Mostly Advisory Body

I would make the House the primary legislative body, with the Senate merely having a veto like the President's, which could be exercised by a 2/3 Senate vote (failing to vote would be counted as declining to veto after a reasonable deadline, perhaps 2 weeks) and which could be overridden by 2/3 of the House. That's sufficient "counterbalance" for areas full of tumbleweeds and cows vis-a-vis areas full of actual people.

[marie999]

43. You won't get 2/3 of the senators to vote for your proposal.

[KT2000]

31. ALEC proposal

that has been around for a while now. Not original Sasse brainstorm.

[msongs]

32. sasse is trump's whore. he should stick to brown nosing the CIC nt

[Sherman A1]

33. Dear Senator

NO

[patphil]

34. So, he's going to "cure" the Senate of it's dysfunctional nature...

by making it an exclusive club of a hundred hand picked party bosses.
I see no advantage to that. It just insures that the Senate will never be free of insanely partisan politics.
It would be like dysfunctional on steroids.

It would bring forth a whole new breed of Senator; one who is even less inclined to give a shit about what is good for the people of his state, let alone his country.
Oh, by the way, it would once again be pretty much an exclusive boy's club.

One thing I can agree with Senator Sasse on is that the founding fathers would most definitely be shocked at the current state of Congress.

However, Sasse's idea of how to cure the situation would make the patient even sicker.

[ToxMarz]

36. Maybe it's just that he sees the Republican party is dead men walking

so they need to fugure out something even more riggable than sowing division, gerrymandering and voter suppression to hold on to power.

[marie999]

44. All the proposals I read here would take a 2/3 vote of the senators

and you are not going to get it.

[ck4829]

49. Nor is Sasse's

Last time I checked, brainstorming and hypotheticals do not put an extra load on the servers, right?

[ck4829]

45. If you want to make a change - Why not abolish the Senate altogether?

Take the two senators for each state and make them "represenatives for the state" that can be voted every two years just like the normal house representatives there would be some clear benefits to this and have the House absorb the Senate's powers delegated to it...

* Check against gerrymandering, every voter in the state would have a say on who those reps for the state would be

* Unicameralism would be a greater check on the executive branch's power, something the past 4 years have shown we desperately could use more of

* Give a lot more value to each vote of each individual voter

Infrastructure-wise and technology-wise, we are not the same country we are back when the Constitution was first written. We should be going forward, not backward.

[marie999]

53. But the senate would not vote to change their part of The Constitution.

Many parts of The Constitution can be changed but it is almost impossible to change any part about Congress because they won't vote for it. The only thing most members of Congress are interested in is getting reelected and making money.

[ck4829]

54. I'm asking why not how

[JI7]

56. This guy is a clueless fool

[roamer65]

57. Neuter the Senate.

Remove its ability to author legislation and the vetoing of House bills. Make it take up every House bill by law.

Only allow it to amend or change.

[Make7]

58. So the solution to a dysfunctional legislature is to have other legislatures select its members? n/t