Guest column: Freedom and the founders

As a self-identifying constitutionalist, I have many thoughts about how to make the America of 2010 look more like the America the Founders envisioned in 1789.  Last year, I had a column in this paper about how the wars our nation fights should be declared by Congress, as the Constitution states, rather than decided by our president, as is the practice since the Korean War. This time, I'm focusing on a constitutional amendment that I believe should be repealed.

The amendment is the 17th, and you probably have never heard of it. The amendment changes Article I, Section III of the Constitution so that the Senate is "elected by the people thereof" rather than "chosen by the legislature thereof." Simply put, it allows for the direct election of senators by the people of each state.

But this is not what the Founding Fathers wanted for the Senate.  For the first 124 years of our Constitution, senators were elected by each state's legislature. On the surface, to repeal the 17th Amendment would take power away from the people. Voters, after all, would no longer be able to directly vote for their respective senators.  Yet, the reality is that by returning this power to each state's legislature, the interests of Americans will be served much more effectively.

There were those who recognized this fact when the 17th Amendment was under debate. In 1894, Rep. Franklin Bartlett (D-N.Y.), argued, "the framers of the Constitution, were they present in this House today, would inevitably regard this resolution [17th Amendment] as a most direct blow at the doctrine of State's rights and at the integrity of the State sovereignties."

To put this in a modern context, repealing the 17th Amendment would take power from individual senators and put it into the hands of the states.  Senators elected by state legislatures would be much less likely to pass bills burdening states with unfunded federal mandates.  Whether it be laws such as the No Child Left Behind Act or calls for war that involve the National Guard, the Senate would be less likely to cede its power to the president and the federal government if it was accountable to its state's legislature.

Furthermore, currently senators are wary of alienating special interest groups because they fund their reelection campaigns.  Repealing the 17th Amendment would make senators wary of alienating their state instead because their state legislature put them in power.  With no popular election, the threat of millions of campaign dollars used for or against senators would be nullified by their state's legislature. 

The repeal of the 17th Amendment is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It is an American one. In 2004, Sen. Zell Miller, who switched to the Republican Party after serving 27 years as a Democratic lieutenant governor, governor and senator, proposed a bill in the Senate to repeal the 17th Amendment. In his speech, he lamented, "The 17th Amendment was the death of the careful balance between state and federal governments … the two governments would be in competition with each other and neither could abuse or threaten the other. … Today, state governments have to stand in line. 

They are just another one of many, many special interests that try to get senators to listen to them.  And they are at an extreme disadvantage because they have no PAC."

The states of our country should never have to wait in line behind the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood to be heard by our federal government — the states are our federal government.

It's time Americans realized this. Our Founders did.

Ned Curry is a senior government and politics major. He can be reached at ecurry2 at umd dot edu.