Jim Breen wrote:
> CL wrote:
>> Declan Murphy wrote:
>>> Are all US Senate (and other?) races based on the British "first past
>>> the post" system? What a shame if that is the case.
> 
>> They didn't all used to be, but the other systems were so corrupt that 
>> states were pretty much forced into it by about 1934.  Some states had 
>> the legislature select the Senator and others were gubernatorial 
>> appointees ... along with a couple of other systems I vaguely remember 
>> hearing about.  A couple of states have toyed with requiring over half 
>> the votes cast or over half the registered number of voters registered, 
>> but runoffs have proved too costly.
> 
> Direct election of US senators became nation-wide in 1913 with the
> 17th amendment. Before then it varied, with many states having their
> legislature selecting the senators. The framers of the Australian
> constitution considered the (then) US-style indirect election (still
> used in Germany, etc.) in the 1890s, but went for direct election.

1913???  Apparently, you've never heard of the State of Louisiana (the
only US state whose laws are not based on the British legal system --
and, some would argue, no one else's either) or The Kingfish (Huey
Long), and neither has the person who wrote the above into Wikipaedia.
Thanks for the quote, though ...

-- 
CL