The following article by David Daley was posted on the AlterNet website July 22, 2017:
The New York Times and Washington Post reported that President Trump has had conversations with top officials about whether he could pardon himself and his family, and also suggested that the White House could be mounting an attack on the credibility of Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor leading the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 campaign.
Trump’s “election integrity” commission convened for the first time on Wednesday and he wasted no time assailing state election officials who have refused the panel’s unprecedented request for detailed voter data. The president alleged, darkly, that uncooperative states might have something to hide. “One had to wonder what they’re worried about,” Trump said. “There’s something. There always is.”
Then as the session concluded, an MSNBC reporter asked vice chairman KrisKobach, Kansas’ Republican secretary of state, whether he believed, as Trump has suggested, that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes because of voter fraud. “We will probably never know the answer to that question,” Kobach replied.
With so much news, however, perhaps the most shocking and consequential story of all slipped under the radar: A bombshell report in the Nation that the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC) – the most influential power behind conservative legislation marching through state legislatures – has drafted a proposal to return the power to select U.S. senators to state legislators.
That’s right: ALEC’s “model legislation” would repeal the 17th amendment, end more than a century of American citizens electing U.S. senators at the ballot box, and empower gerrymandered legislatures to choose senators for us, as was the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As John Nichols, who broke the story for the Nation, wrote: “If successful, they will reverse one of the great strides toward democracy in American history: the 1913 decision to end the corrupt practice of letting state legislators barter off Senate seats in backroom deals with campaign donors and lobbyists.”
The language of this draft resolution, however, frames this in precisely the opposite way. It argues that the 17th amendment, ratified in 1914, did not empower voters but instead disempowered states. As a result, there have been “many unintended consequences, including runaway federal deficits, unfunded mandates, overreach by federal agencies and burdensome impositions by the federal government upon the states.”
If this sounds nutty and far-fetched, however, it’s a position with growing weight inside the conservative movement – and as Nichols reports, has generated positive reviews even from some Republican U.S. senators. Utah Sen. Mike Lee has called the 17th amendment “a mistake,” Nichols notes, and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake endorsed it as “better as it reinforces the notion of federalism to have senators appointed by state legislatures.”
This would also reinforce Republican majorities in the Senate, where the GOP now holds a 52-48 edge. Right now at the state level, however, Republicans control 69 of 99 state legislative chambers, hold both branches in 32 states. Republicans, then, would potentially start with a supermajority of 64 U.S. senators.
That would include both seats in swing states like Ohio – where an effective GOP gerrymander in 2011 helped create a 66-33 supermajority in the state house and a 24-9 advantage in the state senate – and Michigan, where Democratic state house candidates have earned more total votes in 2012, 2014 and 2016, but Republicans continuously win more seats.
Under this proposal, Democratic senators such as Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, Virginia’s Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, for example, would be unlikely to be reappointed if the GOP continued to control those legislatures. Would partisan chambers allow for independent voices such as Bernie Sanders or Angus King? Indeed, the draft legislation might not even tolerate independence in office. It includes a provision stating that “state legislatures may issue instructions to, or recall, their Senators at any time.”
The model legislation hasn’t become an official policy resolution yet. It was scheduled to be debated at ALEC’s annual meeting in Denver this weekend. But what gives ALEC such influence is its direct pipeline into state legislatures through conservative state representatives and senators.
Conservatives legislatures, many of them tilted by gerrymandering, have looked to ALEC to shape their policy agendas. Since its founding in 1973, it has served as a clearinghouse for pro-business legislation. ALEC writes the bills. Legislators introduce them. When similar bills are introduced nationwide and race through Republican legislatures, that’s the influence of ALEC.
The New York Times and Washington Post reported that President Trump has had conversations with top officials about whether he could pardon himself and his family, and also suggested that the White House could be mounting an attack on the credibility of Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor leading the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 campaign.
Trump’s “election integrity” commission convened for the first time on Wednesday and he wasted no time assailing state election officials who have refused the panel’s unprecedented request for detailed voter data. The president alleged, darkly, that uncooperative states might have something to hide. “One had to wonder what they’re worried about,” Trump said. “There’s something. There always is.”
Then as the session concluded, an MSNBC reporter asked vice chairman Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Republican secretary of state, whether he believed, as Trump has suggested, that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes because of voter fraud. “We will probably never know the answer to that question,” Kobach replied.
With so much news, however, perhaps the most shocking and consequential story of all slipped under the radar: A bombshell report in the Nation that the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC) – the most influential power behind conservative legislation marching through state legislatures – has drafted a proposal to return the power to select U.S. senators to state legislators.
That’s right: ALEC’s “model legislation” would repeal the 17th amendment, end more than a century of American citizens electing U.S. senators at the ballot box, and empower gerrymandered legislatures to choose senators for us, as was the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As John Nichols, who broke the story for the Nation, wrote: “If successful, they will reverse one of the great strides toward democracy in American history: the 1913 decision to end the corrupt practice of letting state legislators barter off Senate seats in backroom deals with campaign donors and lobbyists.”
The language of this draft resolution, however, frames this in precisely the opposite way. It argues that the 17th amendment, ratified in 1914, did not empower voters but instead disempowered states. As a result, there have been “many unintended consequences, including runaway federal deficits, unfunded mandates, overreach by federal agencies and burdensome impositions by the federal government upon the states.”
If this sounds nutty and far-fetched, however, it’s a position with growing weight inside the conservative movement – and as Nichols reports, has generated positive reviews even from some Republican U.S. senators. Utah Sen. Mike Lee has called the 17th amendment “a mistake,” Nichols notes, and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake endorsed it as “better as it reinforces the notion of federalism to have senators appointed by state legislatures.”
This would also reinforce Republican majorities in the Senate, where the GOP now holds a 52-48 edge. Right now at the state level, however, Republicans control 69 of 99 state legislative chambers, hold both branches in 32 states. Republicans, then, would potentially start with a supermajority of 64 U.S. senators.
That would include both seats in swing states like Ohio – where an effective GOP gerrymander in 2011 helped create a 66-33 supermajority in the state house and a 24-9 advantage in the state senate – and Michigan, where Democratic state house candidates have earned more total votes in 2012, 2014 and 2016, but Republicans continuously win more seats.
Under this proposal, Democratic senators such as Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, Virginia’s Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, for example, would be unlikely to be reappointed if the GOP continued to control those legislatures. Would partisan chambers allow for independent voices such as Bernie Sanders or Angus King? Indeed, the draft legislation might not even tolerate independence in office. It includes a provision stating that “state legislatures may issue instructions to, or recall, their Senators at any time.”
The model legislation hasn’t become an official policy resolution yet. It was scheduled to be debated at ALEC’s annual meeting in Denver this weekend. But what gives ALEC such influence is its direct pipeline into state legislatures through conservative state representatives and senators.
Conservatives legislatures, many of them tilted by gerrymandering, have looked to ALEC to shape their policy agendas. Since its founding in 1973, it has served as a clearinghouse for pro-business legislation. ALEC writes the bills. Legislators introduce them. When similar bills are introduced nationwide and race through Republican legislatures, that’s the influence of ALEC.
View the post here.