The Electoral College Needs to Go

Background:

I originally wrote this to address PragerU video claiming the Electoral College is essential. I'm not going to post a link to the video, it's propaganda and half-truths and isn't actually relevant other than it was what prompted me to finally write this down. The video is partially correct about the reasons the founders created the EC, but it doesn’t cover all the reasons, nor why none of them apply today, and can never apply in today’s society. It’s also grossly incorrect about how it would work under a popular vote. That's all I'll say about the video, everything below stands on it's own. If you're interested if watching it, it's on YouTube and published in 2014/2015.

History of the Electoral College:

First you have to consider the historical contexts. The public was not well educated. Many couldn’t read or write. There was no national media, no TV, radio, nor even telegraph. News and information travelled relatively slowly. There was no rapid transit, no planes, trains, etc. so candidates had no easy or quick way to reach the voters of every state to get their message out to voters and become well known. Most voters would be familiar only with candidates from their own state, and maybe neighboring states.

Therefore, the EC was created to address these concerns as follows (these are the explicitly stated reasons the founders actually discussed):

1. To take the vote for President and VP out of the hands of relatively uninformed voters and give it to men presumed to be more familiar with political issues and the candidates, including candidates from all other states.
2. To prevent an unqualified populist from ever holding the reigns of the most powerful office in the country.
3. To remove the inherent advantage a candidate from a more populous state from having an overwhelming advantage solely due to name recognition.

Why the EC Isn't Useful Today:

We have universal public education, virtually everyone can read and write, and virtually all have access to nationwide news and information.

Changes in transportation and media technology have made the first and third irrelevant. Any candidate can get their message out via national media, the Internet, radio, TV, newspapers, etc. candidates can travel to all states quickly to speak directly to the voters in those states. The only states harder to physically reach are AK and HI.

The 2020 campaign season demonstrates that even physical travel to those locations is unnecessary now. It is still preferable, but clearly not necessary to reach voters.

Now let's address item #2 from above...2016 demonstrated that due to partisan influence in state laws on selection of electors, the EC is no longer capable of fulfilling its purpose of preventing an unqualified populist from reaching the office, and in fact, it’s the EC that put him there, not the popular vote. He lost the popular vote twice (as of Aug 2024) and looks like he's headed for a third loss in the popular vote in 2024.

Conclusions:

The EC is no longer useful for ANY of its intended purposes. Moreover, it greatly disenfranchises voters in populous states in their vote for the one official elected to represent ALL of the US. Everyone has an approximately equal vote in in electing their House Representative, and the a House represents the people. I’ll skip the Senate in this discussion because they were never supposed to directly represent the people, but the interests of the sovereign states (the state governments). The one person (two counting the VP) whose job it is to represent the best interests of all he people and all the states isn’t elected equally by the people, nor by “more qualified electors” directly representing the people in a state, but by partisans chosen by the parties.

BTW, the founders really disliked political parties and wanted to avoid partisan politics and would be appalled by the EC and the power of the parties today.

The EC is an anachronism that no longer serves any of the purposes it was designed for. It should be eliminated, or radically redesigned to address the concerns of partisan politics, equal representation, and preventing unqualified people from ever becoming President.

Final notes:

1. The oft repeated claim that under a popular vote candidates would just focus on large cities is nonsense that is stuck inside the all/nothing paradigm of the state electors. In a popular vote, every single vote counts equally. Candidates now spend most of their time in the “battleground states” and largely ignore the voters in other states, that’s a result of the EC that would disappear in a popular vote.

In a popular vote, candidates would campaign anywhere they believe they can pick up more votes. 500 votes in rural Kansas are just as valuable as 500 votes in NYC. Don’t take my word for it, look at election of Senators and how they run heir campaigns. A candidate must appeal to voters everywhere to win. Look at the fact that only 5x in US history has the EC vote been other than the winner of the popular vote.

2. You can accomplish materially the same things without eliminating the EC, but by restructuring it to be proportional allocation of electors based on the popular vote in each state. But as that would need to apply to all states, it would require a Constitutional Amendment or you are at the whim of any state legislature to change their allocation at any time (before the election, any change made after the election would be almost certainly considered invalid by Congress in counting the votes of the electors). Imagine a partisan state legislature changing their elector allocation during the campaign season as it becomes clear who is more likely to win overall in their state.

A proposal for reducing mass shootings in the USA.

Background, scope, and context:

We have a violence problem in the USA, and one of the ways that shows up is mass shootings. For purposes of this proposal, I'm referring to incidents where 8 or more people are shot and many of those are killed, and it's not related to gang/drug activity, or family/domestic violence. This is not an attempt to address those other incidents, even though those kill far more people every year. This is to address the large mass shootings such as Columbine HS, Aurora Theater, MSD HS in Parkland, the Newtown/Sandy Hook ES shooting, the Las Vegas concert shooting, etc.

Why am I addressing only these? Because they have a much larger psychological impact on the country, and because they can be addressed much more easily than those other incidents. These are acts of domestic terrorism, specifically stochastic terrorism. These have different causes and different solutions than the gang/drug or family/domestic dispute violence. Addressing those other issues is a much more complex problem involving many aspects of our society, laws, culture, and safety net. I may attempt to address some of those issues in another post, but I'm not going to even attempt them here.

Below is my proposal for limiting access to guns based on their capacity for "mass lethality". No, this won’t stop all such incidents, but it will make them much less likely and will tend to lower the count of injuries and deaths in each incident.

While I'm going to refer to AR-15 type guns because of their familiarity, nothing in the proposal is based specifically on any specific gun, style, or cosmetic features. This is based solely upon capacities, functionality, and maximum round energy. Indeed, this proposal doesn't even need to distinguish between handguns, shotguns, rifles, nor type of action (semi-automatic, bolt-action, etc), nor is it limited to guns using gunpowder, any means of propelling a "bullet"/"projectile" at sufficient energy will qualify.

Note that this proposal does not ban the possession, sale, or manufacturer of any type of gun or ammo currently legal in the US, but it does place some restraints on unlicensed possession of certain guns and upon the transfer of such guns, by proposing they be allowed under a new type of license that is less costly than the existing FFL (federal firearms license) required for possession of fully-automatic guns under the NFA (National Firearms Act), and requiring registration of all covered guns.

Premise: Mass Lethality

The lethality of a given gun is based mostly upon it's range, accuracy, and energy of the fired projectile(s). Now, notice that both range and accuracy are related to the energy of the projectile, higher energy cartridge allows for greater range and accuracy. Those aren't the only factors, rifling, length of barrel, length to caliber ratio of the round, mass of the round, etc all have an effect on range and accuracy. But even mass and caliber factors are significantly affected by the energy of the round. Lower energy with a given mass means lower range and accuracy, likewise, larger caliber means more drag and thus lower range and accuracy at a given energy. In short, energy of the round is the most significant element in determining range, accuracy, penetration, and lethality of a projectile.

Now, consider "mass lethality", that is the speed and ease with with a gun can be used to kill or disable a larger number of people in a given time frame. This is obviously related to it's lethality as above, including it's range, penetration, and accuracy, but also to the sustained rate of fire. Obviously, fully-automatic guns will have the highest rate of sustained fire, but those are already tightly controlled and difficult to obtain, for this very reason.

Guns such as the AR-15, which was in fact designed to be a military assault rifle (but due to political influences was rejected until Colt purchased it from Armalite, made minor changes, then marketed it as the M16 to the military, and then removed the full-auto and burst modes to market it as a civilian semi-automatic). As such, it bears nearly the same mass lethality capacity as its selective-fire siblings. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in many mass shootings, some using stock AR-15 type guns, others using modified versions with "bump stocks" or similar devices to increase the rate or fire to approximately the same as it's fully-automatic siblings, as well as in demonstrations showing how quickly it can be manually fired and how quickly magazines can be changed out. Ergo, it is the combination of larger capacity magazines, higher energy rounds, and rapid cycle times that determine the "mass lethality" of a gun. Similar guns from many manufacturers are now easily available to almost any US citican.

Guns with such "mass lethality" are inherently "weapons of war" and serve no need in hunting or self-defense (see notes at the bottom). Therefore, it is prudent to significantly restrict the possession of such weapons by civilians except when they are engaged in military training maneuvers or deployed in military battle zones.

Terminology

Now, for some concrete definitions.

1. Gun shall mean any device capable of firing one or more projectiles from a "barrel", propelled by "gun powder", "expanding gasses", electricity, or any other "explosive propellant", and said projectile is not self-propelled (e.g. rocket, missile, etc)
2. Magazine shall mean any internal or external means of storing more than one round of ammunition such that it can be moved into a firing position and fired by the gun. This specifically excludes ammo storage containers unless said there is a means other than a specific manual action by the person operating the gun to load additional rounds from that container into a firing position (e.g. belt-fed, chain-fed, or clip-fed rounds fed into the gun). This is the traditional meaning of magazine, just clarifying points so there is no possibility of a "work-around". If it can feed additional rounds into a firing position, it shall meet this definition of magazine. Note that the "cylinder" of a "revolver", or ever a gun with multiple barrels that can each hold one or more rounds will qualify as a "magazine" under this definition.
3. High-capacity magazine shall mean any INTERNAL or EXTERNAL magazine with the capacity to hold more than 10 rounds/cartiridges. 10 rounds is not "high-capacity", 11 is.
4. High-energy round shall mean any projectile intended to be fired from a gun, that has a maximum energy capacity of the cartridge in excess of 800joules. For reference, this allows virtually all common "handgun" rounds except those larger than .45 caliber, and some "Magnum" rounds. Nearly all hunting guns (rifles and shotguns), except those using the .22LR or .22Magnum, exceed that energy, however, those guns rarely have magazines exceeding a 10 round capacity. [note: the figures I based this on are likely “muzzle energy”, not cartridge energy. Either measure could be used, but the energy limit might be higher when measuring maximum cartridge energy. Requires a bit more research to determine the appropriate measure/limit]. Note this refers to the maximum energy cartridge the gun is capable of firing, not the energy of any specific ammo the person possesses.
5. If a gun is capable of firing a high-energy round AND the person possessing the gun is concurrently in possession of a compatible "high-capacity magazine", functional or not, whether or not the magazine is installed in the gun, then it shall be deemed a "weapon of mass lethality" and shall be restricted under this law.
6. Possession shall mean having access to, or control of, such a gun. A gun secured in such a way that you don't have access to fire it is not considered “in your possession” under this proposal, unless you are carrying it.

The proposal:

1. any gun capable of firing a "high-energy" round, and containing an internal "high capacity" magazine, or capable of utilizing an external magazine, MUST be resistered with the state in which the owner resides. This applies regardless of whether the owner possesses any "high-capacity" magazines. If the owner does not possess any compatible high capabity magacines, then only registration is required, no license is needed. However, you MUST obtain a license before you can possess a compatible high-capacity magazine. This also means any transfer (sale, gift, etc) of such a gun to a new owner will require re-registering the gun. If the owner moves to a new state, it must be registered with the new state within 30 days of move.
2. Congress shall create a new type of firearms license allowing possession of these "weapons of mass lethality", criteria and costs for which are TBD, and shall be less costly and shall not require all of the qualifications needed for the existing FFL. It shall not allow a person to possessess any of the weapons that currently require an FFL. Criteria for receiving the license shall include passing a written test indicating they understand the terms of this law, have passed a background check (depth TBD), have completed an authorized gun safety course, have passed an authorized firearms proficiency test on a range,, and have passed a phycological examination.
3. Any gun meeting the criteria above, shall be illegal to possess unless the person possessing it has a valid license for such type of gun or is under the direct supervision of someone with such license, AND has properly registered ownership of the gun or has written, signed, dated, time-limited [to less than 14 days] permission from the properly registered owner to possess it at that time. Written permission from the owner is not required if the person is under the direct supervision the properly licensed and registered owner of the gun. Possession without specified permission from the registered owner shall be a US federal misdemeanor (class TBD) or a felony if the owner says the posessor was not authorized to possess it. Possession without a valid license shall be a class D/E felony, for a first offense. Subsequent offenses should remove all rights to possess any gun.

Notice that all of this is strictly based on measurable capabilities and capacities of the weapon, no judgement calls, nothing cosmetic, and penalties apply based on unlicensed or unregistered possession, not sale, transfer, or manufacture, so there is no "work-around" for it. It either meets the criteria and requires licensing and/or registration, or it doesn’t meet the criteria, and therefore doesn't require any additional licensing or registration, much like the existing NFA laws.

This has virtually no impact on any existing handgun, rifle, or shotgun, except for a few handguns that use high-powered (typically “magnum”) rounds AND hold more than 10 rounds, and the AR-15/AK47 like guns. It doesn't ban any gun, but it does make unlicensed or unregistered possession of specific categories of guns illegal.

In order to avoid being ex-post facto or violating the takings clause, the FedGov shall offer to purchase at market value (established shortly before the legislation is passed, or as soon as possible afterward) any gun or magazine that would become illegal to possess without a license or registration under this law, for a period of 1 year prior to the effective date of this law. Thus, current owners will have numerous options to become compliant before the effective date. Owners will be able to use any one or more of the following options to become compliant with the law:

• Get a license for such type of gun, and register any covered guns. Licenses will include thorough background checks, and are not guaranteed to be issued to any individual who applies. Those who already own a covered gun and magazine who apply during the year prior to the effective date of the law shall have their application fee waived, as will registration fees for currently owned covered guns be waived for those who receive a license.
• Sell covered guns or magazines to another person who is licensed to possess them. This includes anyone possessing the new license type or any FFL.
• Sell covered guns or magazines to the Federal Government at the pre-established prices.
• Exchange high capacity magazines, for a number of 5-10 round magazines to closely match the total capacity of each operational "high-capacity" magazine exchanged, supplied at government expense,or for one 5-10 round magazine if the high capacity magazine is non-functional.
• Destroy any covered guns or magazines, and sign an affidavit attesting to their destruction. Affidavit must include make, model, and serial number of each destroyed gun. Falsifying this affidavit (as evidenced by the later finding of any gun listed on the affidavit shall incur the same indictment and penalty as possession would have, plus an additional felony for the falsification.

It shall be illegal to give, sell, or transfer a "high-capcity" magazine to an unlicensed person. It shall be illegal for an unlicensed person to buy, receive, or build-manufacture a high-capacity magazine. The lone exception to this is that an unlicensed person may temporarily possess such high-capacity magazine while under the direct supervision of a properly licensed person.

Note that it is sufficient to simply sell/destroy/exchange all magazines for covered guns that qualify as a "high capacity" magazine to become compliant. However, later acquisition or manufacture of such a magazine would put an unlicensed/unregistered owner in violation of this law.

Notes:

Yes, the second amendment is about stopping a tyrannical government. Below are the reasons that’s not an excuse against limiting civilian assess to guns like the AR-15:

1. The states have the National Guard, official state militias to protect from the federak government. This is was not the case when the country was founded and the 2nd Amendment was written.
2. There are 80M-100M gun owners in the USA, they vastly outnumber the total number (~2M) of military and police. In the event of any attempt to attack the citizens, it’s likely at least half the police/military would refuse to follow an order to attack and would take whatever arms they could and fight against those who would follow the order. The govt would be greatly outnubered.
3. Having an AR type gun isn’t going to make any difference in such an event, not against professional military armed with tanks, RPGs, LAWS rockets, artillery, fighter jets, bombers, and nuclear weapons. It will be numbers and tactics that win against tyranny, not AR-15 like guns.
4. Likewise, for home/self-defense, an AR-15 like gun isn't going to be any more useful with or without a high-capacity magazine. Handguns and shotguns are the most useful for home/self-defense. If you need to fire more than 10 rounds in self-defense, you've already lost because you were greatly outnumbered, or were not adequately proficient with your gun, and an AR-15 type gun would not likely alter the outcome.
5. Does registration allow tyrants to confiscate guns? No, for two reasons. First, this doesnt require registering all guns, only those meeting the criteria above. Your other guns aren't affected. Second, the number of guns and gun owners already in the US makes that completely unrealistic.
6. Why restrict magazine size? Yes, magazines can be changed very quickly, however, it does generally take 2-3 seconds and changes the focus of a shooter while doing so. Therefore, every time a shooter has to stop and change magazines gives defenders a chance to escape or counter-attack (whether that involves shooting back or physically assaulting the shooter).

Acknowledgements:

Inspiration for this proposal came from my reading of a proposal by a friend of mine. While my proposal is definitely different from his, it was the thing that sparked the idea in my head, so acknowledgement is due for his contribution.People B4 Guns proposal

Updates:

2022-05-31: Given that I've been advocating this proposal for several years (including about 2 years before I posted it here on my blog) as an alternative to an outright ban, but almost no gun owners have tried to get it enacted, I've concluded that too many just don't want to do anything. As such, I'm ok with turning this proposal into an outright ban on the types of weapons it would cover, either way works for me. If you're not willing to be part of the solution, then you are part of the problem and should be treated as such. If you don't like being put in that category, then do something. Take action to address the problem now. Doing nothing isn't working. "Thoughts and prayers" don't work, unless you take action. The "good guy with a gun" theory is thoroughly debunked, as 6x as many shooters are stopped by UNARMED civilians than are stopped by "good guys with guns".

2024-09-04: Minor tweaks and clarifications, corrected a few typos/spelling errors. Changed "high-capacity" magazine from more than 9 rounds to more than 10 rounds, thus reducing the number of covered magazines and simplifying the exchange of "high-capacity" magazines for lower capacity magazines.

Do the New TSA Security Practices Violate the 4th Amendment?

Let me start by noting that I'm not opposed to airport security, I believe some level of security is necessary and appropriate. I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice. However, I can do research. Let's begin by looking at the text of the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution so it's clear what rights we're talking about.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I found a paper written in 2008 by a law school student, which specifically examines the constitutionality of using the backscatter scanners for airport security screening. Excerpts from this paper. The paper contains full case citations, which I've omitted for clarity and brevity.

The Court stated that evaluation of airport searches should be conducted using standards related to “administrative” searches.
...
To be valid, administrative searches must meet the standard of reasonableness as required by the Fourth Amendment. To be reasonable, a passenger “screening search must be as limited in its intrusiveness as is consistent with satisfaction of the administrative need that justifies it.” Consequently, valid passenger screening searches at airports must acknowledge a person’s right to decide not to board an airplane and therefore not be subject to the search.
 
The Court suggested that airports make the options available to passengers approaching screening areas so obvious that someone who decides to board an airplane has consented to the screening. However, at the time the incident at issue occurred, in 1971, “[t]he nature and scope of airport searches were not then widely known.” Therefore, without clear notice of the choice to be screened or not board the airplane, attempting to board the airplane was not necessarily consent.
...
The Ninth Circuit [court, stated] that under Davis, screening procedures at airports must be reasonable to comply with the Fourth Amendment. “An airport screening search is reasonable if: (1) it is no more extensive or intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives; (2) it is confined in good faith to that purpose; and (3) passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly.”
 
In it's report on the scanners, the GAO stated:

...it remains unclear whether the AIT would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident....

The millimeter wave scanners do not reliably image low density materials such as powdered, liquid, or gel explosives. The backscatter scanners only penetrate about 1-2 mm into the skin, so they don't detect items concealed inside the body, or under folds or flaps of skin. Neither system can actually detect explosives, they merely image the shape and rely upon the operator to detect an "anomaly" in the image. USA Today published portions of a Q&A session they conducted with TSA chief John Pistole, in which he admits to those limitations.

Bomb sniffing dogs and electronic trace detectors, aka "sniffers" are far more effective at detecting explosives than are the scanners. Neither dogs nor electronic trace detectors involve invasive searches or pat downs. The FBI and military use explosive detecting dogs because they're more effective, cheaper, portable, and don't require someone to stop and pose for them to be effective.

Below are my conclusions:
 
So, we have expensive scanners, that don't reliably detect the very types of explosives and devices that have been used in the attempts that have been made since 9/11. These scanners effectively create and display a "nude picture" of the person scanned, which is clearly an invasion of privacy. These scanners do not make flying any safer than the prior screening process using metal detectors.

As the backscatter scanners are neither the least intensive nor most effective technologies currently available for the detection of weapons or explosives, the use of these scanners is in direct conflict with prior court findings and the established criteria for "reasonableness" for airport screening. Therefore, using these scanners as a primary screening device fails to meet the standard and is a violation of the 4th Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches.
 
Furthermore, the nature and extent of what is visible to operators of the backscatter scanners and the nature and extent of the enhanced pat down procedures is not yet widely known, therefore, by the previous findings of the court, most passengers may not have consented. I assert that if the TSA where honest with people about how detailed the images are, and how invasive the pat downs are, most people would not consent. When informed of the fact that they don't make flying any safer, I believe very few would consent.

Note, that the author of the referenced paper studying the constitutionality of these scanners arrived at a similar conclusion. He/She notes that the backscatter scanners might pass the test if they're a secondary screening device. However, that point is moot now that the TSA has stated that they intend to use (and in fact are using) the new scanners as a primary screening device.

Burden of Proof:
Given that an "unreasonable search" without a warrant is prohibited by the 4th Amendment, any agency implementing an administrative search is requesting an exception to do something that is explicitly prohibited unless it falls within the strict requirements for an administrative search. That puts the burden of proving that a search (and methods/equipment used for a search) meets the explicit requirements to be classified as an administrative search upon the person/agency performing the search. Thus, the TSA must prove that these scanners meet the criteria set forth above. That they have not done so, and in fact have refused to provide any proof of their effectiveness as compared to less invasive and less intensive methods, means they have not met the criteria for an administrative search, and therefore, are in violation of the 4th Amendment prohibition against "unreasonable search".

The "Enhanced Pat Downs":
The new "en-hands-ed pat downs" as I prefer to call them, are also a gross violation. They feel you all over, including your genitals, butt, and breasts. They're more intensive than the police use when you're arrested, or when you're entering prison. They amount to being "groped" which is a type of sexual assault. That is not acceptable, it's not legal, and we can not allow it to continue.

These "pat downs" are being performed on people who haven't even been accused of a crime, much less arrested or convicted. They're being performed on children, teens, adults, senior citizens, etc. People in a wheelchair and those with many types of medical implants or prosthetics will always receive one of these "pat downs" either because they can't go through the detector/scanner, or because they will always trigger an alert on the detector/scanner.

There is nothing "reasonable" about groping passengers. There is no way this can be considered to pass the "reasonableness" test, given that it must be primary screening method for many people due to their use of medical devices.

This is not a "slippery slope" we're on, it's a steep hill of solid ice, with no way to get traction once you go over the edge. At the bottom of the hill are whips and shackles. We must demand that the government stop violating our rights.

But don’t take my word for it, research it yourself, all the legal citations are in the document I linked at the beginning. For another view, check out this op-ed piece in the Washington Post. It covers some of what I cover above, and it's from a law professor.

I believe it's possible to improve airport security without invading our privacy or violating our rights. There are less invasive, less expensive, and more effective ways to implement airport security. We need to demand that they use legal, practical, sane, and effective security procedures, not these gross invasions of our privacy and illegal searches of our persons. I'll detail some of those methods in my next blog post.

Update 2010-12-08 @ 17:15
Updated to clarify that MMW scanners can't image low density materials and that neither type of scanner actually detects anything, they require an operator to notice anomalous shapes.

Update 2011-07-21 @ 12:15
Added section on burden of proof.

Repeal the 17th Amendment

The 17th Amendment transfers the election of Senators from the State legislatures to the people of the State. To uphold the 10th Amendment (and indeed the rest of the constitution), we should start by repealing the 17th Amendment.

The 10th Amendment states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The US Senate was never intended to be direct representatives of the people, but rather representatives of the states. The interests of a State will not always directly correspond with the interests of the people of that State. The primary reason each State has the same number of senators regardless of population is so that each State is equally represented, as it clearly does not provide equal representation of the people.

One of the reasons for the revolutionary war was "taxation without representation", which led to the USA creating a "representative form of government" in which all affected parties had representatives. When we ratified the 17th Amendment, we took the representatives away from the States. The 17th amendment weakened the States by limiting their ability to protect those powers reserved to the States (aka "states rights") and shifted the balance of power in favor of the federal government. In doing so, we limited the ability of the States to defend their sovereign powers and to reign in the federal government in the normal course of business.

To correct this imbalance, some people have proposed adding a "repeal amendment" that allows a majority of States to repeal any federal law. Strictly speaking, such an amendment is not necessary. Here is the text of Article 5 of the US Constitution:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

This makes 2 things clear:
1. That 3/4 of the states can effectively repeal any Federal law by calling a constitutional convention (2/3 of the states) which proposes and passes (3/4 of the States) an amendment which nullifies that Federal law. It's a rather slow and clumsy way to do it, but it's possible.
2. That Senators are representatives of the States, not of the people.

Senators are supposed to be the representatives of the states, representing the interests of the State governments. Repealing the 17th Amendment would go a long way toward restoring the representatives of the States, and restoring the balance of power.

That doesn't mean adding a "repeal amendment" has no value. Repealing the 17th Amendment is the first step in restoring the balance of power, but it might not be the only step, especially given the size and power the federal government has amassed in the 97 years since the 17th Amendment was ratified. A "repeal" amendment would simplify the process of state nullification of unjust federal laws, and for that reason, it may be useful. Because an action taken under a proposed repeal amendment would occur by action of the State legislatures (direct representatives of the people of each State), or by the people themselves. In effect, it would be one more check on the power of the federal government.