New Bill Takes Aim At Direct Senate Elections

By Leah Dearborn | Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

Georgia lawmakers are in push for a repeal of the 17th Amendment creating instead direct Senate elections. Georgia State Rep. Kevin Cooke is sponsoring the bill to repeal the 17^th Amendment. Cooke and other Republican lawmakers wish to end direct elections of U.S. senators by empowering state legislatures instead. The Huffington Post Reports:

In the text of the resolution, Cooke cites Madison’s writing in the Federalist Papers, specifying that members of the Senate would be “elected absolutely and exclusively by state legislatures.” The resolution says the 17th Amendment has prevented state governments from having a say in federal government and that repealing the amendment would hold U.S. senators accountable to the states. The federal government has grown in “size and scope,” it says, in the century since the amendment was adopted.

Cooke believes that the removal of the 17^th Amendment would be a reversion back to the original intent of the Constitution. Georgia is not the first state to reexamine the Amendment; a similar proposition failed in New Hampshire last year, and a partial repeal was introduced as a bill in Tennessee earlier this month.