The Seventeenth Amendment

The Text

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.

What It Says

Senators are elected directly by the voters of each state. Before this, state legislatures chose them.

What It Protects Against

Nothing directly. It removed the states’ institutional representation in the federal government, and whether that was a repair or a loss is one of the live structural arguments about the modern federal balance.

Protocol Media reading. Not sourced to a ratification-era document.

Problem Addressed

Legislative selection of senators had produced deadlocks that left seats vacant for extended periods, and a series of bribery scandals in the late nineteenth century drove the campaign for direct election.