Seventeenth Amendment

Seventeenth Amendment Article I, section 3 of the Constitution provided for election of senators by the state legislatures, apparently in the hope that the Senate would represent a different constituency than the House of Representatives. By 1900 the evolving ideal of democracy had made this scheme seem inappropriate, and some states had evaded the provision by requiring the legislature to name the candidate already approved by a popular vote. There was much pressure on Congress—including the threat of calling a constitutional convention—to amend the clause. In response, Congress proposed an amendment, ratified by the states in 1913, providing that senators be elected directly by those citizens qualified to vote for the “most numerous branch” of the state legislature.

The amendment has not often been subjected to judicial review, because states seemingly had little reason to evade or minimize its effects. Politically, it probably helped to break up the party oligarchy in the Senate, since state political bosses found it more difficult to get their candidates elected by the voters. Otherwise the amendment has had little perceptible effect on the nature of the Senate. But like much of the progressive agenda of the period, such as the direct primary, it has tended to undercut party power by bypassing the political mechanisms through which that power was exercised.

See also Constitutional Amendments; Elections; Progressivism.

Loren P. Beth