The 22nd Amendment is virulently anti democratic.
Only those who loathe democracy would tolerate the continuation of the 22nd Amendment.
We were able to repeal idiotic Prohibition. We can repeal the 22nd Amendment, too.
Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the direct election of Senators, too. Let’s return some power to the States. Repeal the 17th Amendment.
You’re welcome, America.
Our country felt it necessary to enact the 17th Amendment for good reason.
First, it was widely believed state legislators were easily bought. There were several cases of such corruption which fed into this belief. And one only has to pick up a local newspaper to see this is still true today.
Second, just ponder how often the US Senate is deadlocked today by partisans. The same was true of state legislatures.
Between 1891 and 1905, 46 elections were deadlocked, in 20 different states; in one extreme example, a Senate seat for Delaware went unfilled from 1899 until 1903. The business of holding elections also caused great disruption in the state legislatures, with a full third of the Oregon House of Representatives choosing not to swear the oath of office in 1897 due to a dispute over an open Senate seat. The result was that the legislature was unable to pass legislation that year.
By the time the 17th amendment was a viable proposal, 33 states had already changed their election laws so that their Senators were chosen by popular vote. 31 state legislatures had passed resolutions calling for a Constitutional amendment allowing popular vote, and ten Republicans who opposed an amendment lost their seats. 27 states were calling for a constitutional convention, with 31 being the threshold.
But there is yet more to this than meets the eye. Much more.
You see, in the past, voter district lines were based on geography, not population. Voting districts were given equal geographic size, the result of which was rural votes were seriously overweighted. There might be 20 times as many people in an urban voting district, but they were given one representative in the state legislature, and the rural district was also given one representative in the state legislature even though it had much fewer people in it.
In such a scheme, one can see how the votes of rural voters, who tend to be conservatives, greatly outweigh the votes of urban voters (who tend to be liberal).
Three Supreme Court decisions changed all that. These are known as the "one man, one vote" decisions. District lines are now based on population.
But...US Senate districts (the states) are still based on geography. And there are still more rural states than heavily urbanized states.
You can see where this is going.
This means, on the Senate district level, rural states' votes continue to be more heavily weighted than urbanized states with the result that 28 state legislatures are Republican controlled, while only 21 state legislatures are Democratic controlled. The rest are split.
Consequently, the immediate result of repealing the 17th amendment would result in 56 GOP Senators, 42 Democratic Senators, with the rest being a tossup. The Republicans would gain a permanent majority in the Senate.
I believe that is the real purpose of the drive to repeal the 17th amendment, with the restoring-states-authority-over-the-federal-government argument just the thinnest of smokescreens.
