17th Amendment Impact on the United States

Ever since April 8, 1913, a portion of US citizens, primarily Conservatives politicians and commentators, have had mixed feelings of the ratification of the 17th amendment. Before, elected members of each House in a state would vote for two senators that they felt best represented their state. Many questioned why the amendment was necessary while a majority defended its ratification. As a result, it’s been argued that this modification took away one of the major powers of the states and increased the national government’s power. Others have said that repealing the amendment would strip away the people’s rights and bring back the corruption that took place in pre-17th amendment elections. But removing and repealing the 17th amendment would finally return powers to the states, decrease corruption, force voters to become more interested in who they’re electing, give Senate the ability to do what they are intended to do, restore the checks and balances system, and restore Federalism. Arguments to remove the amendment outweigh ones that fight to keep it. Repeal it or not, there are still going to be issues. For instance, before the ratification of the 17th amendment, U.S. Senators bought their seats through bribes (Mighell). After 1913, corruption was still present, but it was more of an “underground” deal. It used to be between a candidate and a state legislature, today, it’s the candidate and numerous unknown funding sources (The Campaign). In other words, there were obviously

76) With this in mind the framers carefully and purposefully crafted a Constitution that divided federal powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. This division of power gave each branch the ability and authority to control the others through a specific system of checks and balances. One check on Congress was the design of a bicameral system where Congress was divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected by majority popular vote making them the direct representative of their constituencies. Members of the Senate would be elected by state legislatures making them direct representatives of the states, and proponents of the state’s rights and sovereignty. Joseph Story (1833) suggests that one main reason for the mode of appointing the Senate was to introduce a powerful check upon rash legislation, and prevent the national governments encroachment on the powers of the states (p.183). However, in passing the 17th Amendment the mode of electing the Senate as a means of partitioning federal and state power collapsed leaving the states unprotected from abuses of the central government.

“Perhaps the greatest debate undertaken by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 centered on how many representatives each state should have in the new government's lawmaking branch, the U.S. Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, resolving a great debate, required a Great Compromise.”(About) The Great Compromise that was reached by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth on July 16, 1787 incorporated the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan in parts. It formed a bicameral legislature as proposed by the Virginia Plan. It also decided that the lower house would have representatives in proportion to population of each state. These representatives would be elected by the people. However, while deciding on the representation of states in the upper house, as per the tenets of the Great Compromise, each state would have two members, irrespective of its population.

At the turn of the century the United States of America was launched into the Progressive Era, which called for massive reform across a variety of areas such as, politics, social life, and economics. Through 1900 and 1920, progressive reformers in the presidency and congress brought about reform from the federal level to the national level.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.” (Jefferson, 1801) This idea echoed far beyond it’s time and into the minds and hearts of the Populist’s, and became the center and the driving force of the Progressive era. During the gilded age railroads were being built, Industrialization was rising, the population of United States was increasing dramatically; and corporate businesses were becoming extremely

In the Great Compromise it stated that the legislative branch would be divided up into two groups. These two groups were called the senate and the house of representatives. One side would be based off of population while the other half would be based off of equality. Each side would create laws. In the great compromise each state had one senate which would later change into two. The senate wasn't based on size or population it was the same for every state. The house of representatives however this was the side that was based off of population. This resulted in some states having more representatives than others because some states had more population than

There are big states and small states, and the small states felt that they were not being represented fairly. This is when the New Jersey Plan was made. There would be a House of Representatives which was based on population. The Constitution state in Article 1, Section 2 that “representatives… shall be apportioned… according to… (population)...” (Document D). There was also the Senate, and there would be two representatives from each state. The Constitution stated “The senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state…” (Document D). This was fight between big states and small states for equal representation and this was a fair compromise for everyone. No one state or person is able to gain too much power this way and everyone is fairly

In document D, the quote explains that there will be favor towards the larger states in the House and In the Senate there will be favor towards the smaller states. This proclamation was called the great compromise. Due to great controversy between how states should be represented in

The Great Compromise is a system that splits congress into two houses, one based on population, and one based on equality. Document D is an excerpt from the Constitution, written by 55 delegates from 12 states in 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It explains how The Great Compromise protects the nation from tyranny. According to Doc D,” Representatives… shall be appointed… according to… (population)... The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state…”

The Three- Fifths Compromise, mentioned in document 5, established the way in which slaves would be counted toward representation in the House of Representatives. Every five slaves would be counted as three people “including those bound to service for a term of years…three fifths of all persons”. The Great Compromise, showed in document 6, was the final agreement for a way to govern the United States. This Compromise agreed with the Virginia Plan and made the legislative branch bicameral “Created a Congress that is made up of two branches”. The two branches are the Senate and The House of Representatives. According to Document 5 the representation in the House of Representatives is composed of members chosen by the people of the several states for two years, the representation in the Senate is determined by two senators from each state. The chosen people for the Senate have a six year term. (Doc 5 & 6). Furthermore, based on the graph from document 4, it shows that the states Delaware and Rhode Island will support the new Congress due based on equal representation because of the population, they are able to evenly distribute the power. The states Massachusetts and Virginia would seem to support new Congress based on population because of the massive population it contains. Instead of everyone, it would be a group of

With a final decision of five to four, the states passed the Great Compromise and it was officially adopted in July 16, 1781. The Great Compromise proposed that the United States would have a bi-cameral legislature instead of an unicameral legislature. There would be two houses: an upper house known as The Senate, and a lower house as The House of Representatives. There would be two senators per state, which favored the equality that small states were longing for. The number of House of Representatives per state would depend on how populous the state was according to the decennial census, giving citizens in large states equal power to citizens of small states. Senators were to be appointed by the State legislatures and would have six-year terms. Whereas the members of The House of Representatives are elected by the public vote and have two-year terms.

The Great Compromise can be defined as the Constitutional Convention’s agreement to establish a two-house national legislature, with all states having equal representation in one house and each state having representation based on its population in the other house. This compromise was described more in Document D, which was a passage from the Constitution of the United States, and it says under Article 1, Section 2, House of Representatives, “Representatives shall be appointed according to population… but each state shall have at least one representative” (Document D). This quote demonstrates, that every state had at least one vote in the House of Representatives in Congress, and each vote represents power. This helped to guard against tyranny, along with the fact that each state had equal power and votes in the Senate, because it allowed the smaller states to not become overpowered by the larger states. The Virginia Plan, which was created by Edmund Randolph and James Madison, proposed a bicameral, or two-house, legislature with representation based on population, obviously favoring the larger states.

The Progressive Era was a term used to describe a time period that had numerous reforms to correct the problems of the country. The origins of this time period was created from the lower class aiming to, “eliminate corruption in government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, and improve working conditions.” Not only did the lower class support reform, but middle class workers too because they were in competition with immigrants for jobs or they were women struggling for the same rights that men had. Another reform Progressives wanted was the right to a direct say in the primaries of elections so the public had more control within government. With more control in the government, this would allow the power of big corporation to be limited and prevent future problems that the middle and lower classes could endure. These goals the reformers had in the Progressive Era, led to a plethora of movements and actions in

The Great Compromise of 1787 settled the debate on representation resulting in the government agreeing to have the Senate equally represented by two officials for each state and the House of Representatives was characterized based on the population of each state. There were two sides to the debate: The Virginia Plan and The New Jersey Plan. Each Plan only benefitted one side or the other because both sides had a different portrayal of equal power. One wanted equal delineation for all, while the other wanted apportionment. The biggest obstacle was attempting to balance the power between the small and large states. The road to a balance of power was long and tedious. Despite the differences in opinions on how power should be divided, they did

I would not support the repealing of the seventeenth amendment. The seventeenth amendment states that the people are able to vote for the senator directly instead of allowing the state legislator to appoint them. Before 1913 the state legislators were able to appoint someone as senator. Then their was the change in the constitution and their had to be a reason why the constitution was changed. My way of looking at it is that the people should have the right to vote for the senator because it would be unfair if the state legislator cause. In Pennsylvania we have a mostly republican state legislator if the legislator were to appoint a senator it would most likely be a republican. This would cause problems considering they do not take in to consideration