Voters have elected their senators in the privacy of the
voting booth since 1913. The framers of the Constitution,
however, did not intend senators to be elected in this way
and included in Article I, section 3, "The Senate of the
United States shall be composed of two Senators from each
state, chosen by the legislature thereof for six Years; and
each Senator shall have one Vote." The election of
delegates to the Constitutional Convention established the
precedent for state selection. The framers believed that in
electing senators, state legislatures would cement their tie
with the national government, which would increase the
chances for ratifying the Constitution. They also expected
that senators elected by state legislatures would be able to
concentrate on the business at hand without pressure from
the populace.
This process seemed to work well until the mid-1850s. At that
time, growing hostilities in various states resulted in
vacant Senate seats. In Indiana, for example, the conflict
between Democrats in the southern half of the state and the
emerging Republican Party in the northern half prevented the
election of any candidate, thereby leaving the Senate seat
vacant for two years. This marked the beginning of many
contentious battles in state legislatures, as the struggle
to elect senators reflected the increasing tensions over
slavery and states' rights that led to the Civil War.
After the Civil War, problems in senatorial elections by the
state legislatures multiplied. In one case in the late
1860s, the election of Senator John Stockton of New Jersey
was contested on the grounds that he had been elected by a
plurality rather than a majority in the state legislature.
Stockton based his defense on the observation that not all
states elected their senators in the same way and presented
a report that illustrated the inconsistency in state
elections of senators. In response, Congress passed a law in
1866 regulating how and when senators were elected in each
state. This was the first change in the process of
senatorial elections created by the Founders. The law helped
but did not entirely solve the problem, and deadlocks in
some legislatures continued to cause long vacancies in some
Senate seats.
Intimidation and bribery marked some of the states'
selection of senators. Nine bribery cases were brought
before the Senate between 1866 and 1906. In addition, 45
deadlocks occurred in 20 states between 1891 and 1905,
resulting in numerous delays in seating senators. In 1899
problems in electing a senator in Delaware were so acute
that the state legislature did not send a senator to
Washington for four years.
The
impetus for reform began as early as 1826, when direct election of senators was first proposed. In
the 1870s, voters sent a petition to the House of
Representatives for a popular election. From 1893 to 1902,
momentum increased considerably. Each year during that
period, a constitutional amendment to elect senators by
popular vote was proposed in Congress, but the Senate
fiercely resisted change, despite the frequent vacancies and
disputed election results. In the mid-1890s, the Populist
Party incorporated the direct election of senators into its
party platform, although neither the Democrats nor the
Republicans paid much notice at the time. In the early
1900s, one state initiated changes on its own. Oregon
pioneered direct election and experimented with different
measures over several years until it succeeded in 1907. Soon
after, Nebraska followed suit and laid the foundation for
other states to adopt measures reflecting the people's
will. Senators who resisted reform had difficulty ignoring
the growing support for direct election of senators.
After the turn of the century, momentum for reform grew
rapidly. William Randolph Hearst expanded his publishing
empire with Cosmopolitan
and championed the cause of direct election with muckraking
articles and strong advocacy of reform. Hearst hired a
veteran reporter, David Graham Phillips, who wrote scathing
pieces on senators, portraying them as pawns of
industrialists and financiers. The pieces became a series
titled "The Treason of the Senate," which appeared
in several monthly issues of the magazine in 1906. These
articles galvanized the public into maintaining pressure on
the Senate for reform.
Increasingly, senators were elected based on state referenda,
similar to the means developed by Oregon. By 1912, as many
as 29 states elected senators either as nominees of their
party's primary or in a general election. As
representatives of a direct election process, the new
senators supported measures that argued for federal
legislation, but in order to achieve reform, a
constitutional amendment was required. In 1911 Senator
Joseph Bristow of Kansas offered a resolution proposing a
constitutional amendment. The idea also enjoyed strong
support from Senator William Borah of Idaho, himself a
product of direct election. Eight southern senators and all
Republican senators from New England, New York, and
Pennsylvania opposed Senator Bristow's resolution. The
Senate approved the resolution largely because of the
senators who had been elected by state-initiated reforms,
many of whom were serving their first term and therefore may
have been more willing to support direct election. After the
Senate passed the amendment, which represented the
culmination of decades of debate about the issue, the
measure moved to the House of Representatives.
The House initially fared no better than the Senate in its
early discussions of the proposed amendment. Much wrangling
characterized the debates, but in the summer of 1912 the
House finally passed the amendment and sent it to the states
for ratification. The campaign for public support was aided
by senators such as Borah and political scientist George H.
Haynes, whose scholarly work on the Senate contributed
greatly to passage of the amendment.
Connecticut's approval on April 8, 1913, gave the
Seventeenth Amendment
the required three-fourths majority needed for enactment.
The following year marked the first time all senatorial
elections were held by popular vote.
The Seventeenth Amendment restates the first paragraph of
Article I, section 3 of the Constitution and provides for
the election of senators by replacing the phrase "chosen
by the Legislature thereof" with "elected by the
people thereof." In addition, it allows the governor or
executive authority of each state, if authorized by that
state's legislature, to appoint a senator in the event
of a vacancy, until a general election occurs.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two
Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof,
for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The
electors in each State shall have the qualifications
requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of
the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State
in the Senate, the executive authority of such State
shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies:
Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower
the executive thereof to make temporary appointments
until the people fill the vacancies by election as the
legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the
election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes
valid as part of the Constitution.