States Power and the 17th Amendment Why States Lost

17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1913. It altered the way in which Senators of the Congress were elected. Previously, under Article 1 of the Constitution, it was the state legislature's responsibility to elect senators to Congress. With the 17th Amendment, however, the voting power was placed directly into the hands of the public.

The Amendment also provided a way for states to allow governors to fill vacancies in their state's appointed seats in Congress by temporarily appointing a senator until a time in which a special election could be conducted. The text of the Amendment states specifically that "two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years" shall be the manner in which senators are now voted into office.

This effectively made the process of electing senators more democratic and less representational, in the sense that that the voting public had the power to choose its congressional representative directly as opposed to having the state legislature act as a middle man between the voting public and its representatives in Congress. What was the effect of this new Amendment on American politics? First it is necessary to understand how the political scene was established prior to the passing of the Amendment.

Under the original draft of the Constitution, the state legislature was empowered with the ability to determine the state's elected senators for a six-year term.

One of the advantages of this order was that with the states recognizing a central government to which each was bound (rather than all the states acting as a loose federation, which was the case prior to the adoption of the Constitution), anti-federalists (who were a strong and adamant group of citizens opposed to a central government) could breathe more easily believing that the states could have some degree of protection against any central power that tried to assert too much authority over smaller states.

The state legislature thus retained a degree of autonomy from both the populist form of government (represented by the House of Representatives, the other wing of the bicameral Congress) and from the encroachment of federal authorities. Thus, the original method of electing senators was simply an exercise that afford state legislatures more authority than they otherwise would have -- and at a time when anti-federalist sentiment was strong, this idea was a positive one in terms of ensuring that individual states retained some strength.

However, as time wore on, objections were made that state legislatures were susceptible to corruption and could not be trusted to pick senators -- that the election process should be placed directly into the hands of citizens. The other problem with states being allowed to vote senators into office was the issue of electoral deadlocks (Bybee 538).

These two problems went together and created an atmosphere of distrust among the public, which began to believe that rather than helping the states to maintain some autonomy in the face of the central government, the Constitution as it was written on this matter was actually undermining the authority of the people, who believed they were now being manipulated and controlled by corrupt officials within the state legislature.

Examples of this suspicion were evident in the fact that in the latter half of the 19th century, there were three Senate investigations into corruption related charges over elections.

In the very first year of the 20th century, in fact, William Clark's election to the Senate by his state legislature was overturned and ruled null because the investigatory committee found that his election had been the result of purchased votes within his state's legislature; however, such judgments were not necessarily indicative of an entirely rotten system, and Zwicki points out that in one hundred years of state legislature elections of men to the Senate, there were 10 incidents wherein corruption charges were actually brought up as part of contested elections (Zwicki 1022).

This shows that by far and away the method used to elect senators was one that worked and was one that maintained states' autonomy from the federal government. By putting the power to elect senators directly into the hands of the populace, however, that autonomy was chipped away. The 17th Amendment essentially ensured that all Senators now had to do to get elected was run a ground campaign. They no longer had to be discerned as capable men, judged fit to represent the state by the state's legislature.

Now all they had to do was convince the public: it was a process that was meant to be empowering for the citizen but that actually stripped the state of a means of wielding power against the federal government and blocking the intervention of special interest groups.

Special interest groups could now intervene in the electoral process by supporting and financing senatorial campaigns so that the man they wanted to win office was sure to receive the most supportive publicity, which would in turn influence and shape the mind of the average voter. Without the buffer and filter that the state legislature could afford, the senate was now at the mercy of the same forces that impacted every other election.

Likewise, the issue of electoral deadlocks was not as bad as it sounded -- because a deadlock was actually a sign that states were serious about choosing their senators. While deadlocks could go on for years, it just made choosing members of the state legislature that much more important. By placing the importance on this level of government it ensured that local power was stronger than central power, as it was the state legislature that would choose its federal representatives in at least one wing of the Congress.

But by using the excuse of deadlocks as a reason to take power out of the hands of the state legislature, it actually robbed the states of.