Popular election of senators has been a disaster, it essentially turned to the Senate from a deliberative body into a pure partisan body like the House.
But it's not clear how long that can be sustained now. The recent appointment of KBJ takes it in that direction. She has stated in court opinions that are themselves clearly unconstitutional, like:
"Having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.Ds and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States… These issues should not be in presidential control."
A SCOTUS judge should not be concerned with the "best interest of the citizens". That's not her job, that's the job of politicians. Making decisions on such a basis renders SCOTUS merely another House, but one that considers itself above the others in the power rankings. And what she's asserting is that the President should have no power over the executive branch, which is what Democrats want but isn't what the constitution says.
Popular election of senators in the senate / upper house hasn't been a disaster there.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate
Australia also has political weightings wrt various regions populations.
The people vote in Representatives to debate policy, an independent merit based civil service carries it out, overwatched by independent scrutineers, judged by and independent legal system and enforce by a spectrum of LEOs and peace officers.
A feature of the Australian system (IMHO) is how rapid the churn on Prime Ministers can be ... the Washington system by contrast can't even toss out a corrupt felon grifting hard in public view.
eg: Do you refer to the government of Prime Minister Robert Menzies and its clandestine actions wrt organisers of the Vietnam moratorium protests?
* https://mhnsw.au/whats-on/exhibitions/persons-interest-asio-... etc.
It's also unclear why one would expect that the Senate would be less partisan if its membership were selected by state legislatures. State legislators have a lot more partisan loyalty than the rest of us, both because they tend to be more ideological and because they are deeply dependent on the party for future career prospects.
Put another way: it would do nothing. If it did something, it would likely make everything worse, not better. Legislatures would pick the most partisan hack. They would be answerable to fewer, more partisan people. It would pour fire on an already tenuous situation.
It would also make congress significantly less representative of the country, but I guess that's the point.
My proposed elector appointment algorithm is as follows. For each elector seat, summon 20 grand juries according to standard methods (distribute across various counties, weighted by population). Each grand jury spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. The 20 representatives from the 20 grand juries form a secondary grand jury, which also spends a day getting to know one another, then appoints one member as a representative using approval voting. This produces 1 elector. Electors serve 8-year terms, staggered so that their appointments occur midway through a presidential term when emotions are relatively placid.
If you persuade a few big swing states to adopt this approach for appointing electors, the nature of the presidential contest changes dramatically.
This is more along the lines of how the presidential elector system was supposed to work in the first place. Presidential electors were supposed to be leading individuals of the community, not otherwise involved in politics, exercising their independent judgement. That's what the founders intended.
Sounds like a bad idea and far from non-violent
Abolish the Senate. End our vetocracy. (h/t Francis Fukuyama)