In the wake of an election that saw Republicans across the country swept out of office by a massive blue wave, former Trump attorney and religious-right commentator Jenna Ellis is calling for the Constitution to be amended because the voters are too "stupid" to be trusted to elect their own senators.
Outraged by Michigan voters' decision to elect Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate, Ellis said on her radio program today Republicans must focus on making "generational" changes to our electoral process via a Convention of States that will propose constitutional amendments to alter our system of government as it currently stands.
Originally under the Constitution, senators were chosen by their respective state legislatures, but that was changed by the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913 which gave voters the power to elect their senators.
This was a mistake, Ellis said, because "the people can be stupid," as demonstrated by the election of El-Sayed.
"The whole Trump era has basically been a dam and a wall against this entire deluge of the worst from the left," Ellis said. "There are cracks now that we've seen over the last couple of years in that wall and I think that the dam broke last night."
"Every election can't just be a reprieve," she continued. "We have to holistically look at some changes for the country that are more generational. And this is why for a long time I have been an advocate of the Convention of States Project, because one of the things that our founders provided for us in the original Constitution was a republic, not just a democracy that every election and every office went directly to the voters."
"There's kind of been this perception, even among conservatives, that more access to the franchise of voting, the more things that go on the ballot for the people's engagement, the better," Ellis declared. "Well, the people can be duped. When you look at people who are voting for socialist candidates; the fact that we have El-Sayed now in Congress, the people can be stupid."
"This is why when Amendment 17 changed the U.S. Senate, instead of having the state legislatures appoint U.S. senators to represent the states, it went to a popular vote, this is why now we may not have a good Senate until 2032," Ellis griped. "So we have to take stock of maybe some of those generational losses that it's not just at the ballot box, but that we can cure some of these systemic process problems moving forward and take a really hard look. ... If not now, when? How long are you going to wait, and how much does America have to lose before we say, 'Okay, now we're finally going to shatter the glass and say it is time'?"
