Scandalist Alaska

Lets talk about Alaska.  The most interesting political characters always seem to come from Alaska.  No I’m not talking about Palin this time, but the senator Joe Miller. Mr. Miller stated in a statement about a week ago that he would support  a repeal of the 17th amendment.  He claimed that by repealing the 17th amendmentwilling to point out the problem in Miller’s policy, yes even in Alaska.  In fact Senator  Murkowski, who is a republican herself, and the Mayor of Sitka, who is a democrat named Scott McAdams, both agree that repealing the 17th amendment is not in the people’s best interest.  he would be allowing the “direct election of senators by the public rather than by state legislatures” (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/10/joe-miller-id-back-repeal-of-1.html).  Now I’m not sure if Joe Miller really understands the importance of the 17th amendment.  Ironically the 17th Amendment allows a direct vote of the people to decide the senator during election years.  This was a huge change from what the founding fathers thought was the best thing to do.  The original constitution allows the state legislator to vote in the senators.   Even though the founding fathers “believed that having a state legislator elect senators would strengthen the relationship between the states and the national government” in practice this article allowed more corruption (O’Connor, 87) .  Having Joe Miller in favor of repealing the 17th amendment, which only allows the state legislator to fill a vacancy until the next election, is not a huge threat to the election process but it does shed a negative light Alaska’s republican politics.  Thankfully there are still some  who see the importance of the 17th amendment and are

It’s just really sad that a person who clearly does not completely understand the policy and openly calls the living constitution “bullshit” is running for an office this far into the game.  It is obvious that Joe Miller is getting frustrated with the way the government is run, which is something I can relate to completely, but I don’t believe that by allowing the local government to once again elect the Senators will solve any of our problems. 
If anything it would help the government get farther way from the people and give much more room for corruption. Miller may be trying to change the 17th amendment by not having the State legislator vote in a replacement Senator if there is a vacancy.  Unfortunately that ideal is not very practical.  Having a vote that comes up spontaneously, even if it is in a state as small as Alaska would not only be very difficult to do efficiently, but also very time consuming. This would be a very costly and confusing campaign that would leave everyone frustrated.   

One more thing to add that’s a little random but funny, Sarah Palin supports Joe Miller.