Seventeenth Amendment

“The Seventeenth Amendment does not authorize legislatures to direct how the Governor makes an appointment to fill vacancies, and the legislature may not impose an additional qualification on who the Governor may appoint beyond the qualifications for a United States Senator set forth in the Constitution.”

The framers, who distrusted popular majorities, would have frowned on public pressure being a factor in the decision making on impeachment and conviction; but the advent of the Seventeenth Amendment, making senators directly elected by the people of their respective states, makes such pressure relevant and inevitable.

Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, in 1913, senators were chosen by state legislatures, or, in many cases, not chosen, since legislatures frequently deadlocked and left the seats vacant.

The seventeenth amendment provides that whenever a vacancy occurs in the senate the governor of the state in which the vacancy occurs shall issue a writ of election for the filling of such vacancy, but that the legislature may authorize the governor to fill the vacancy by a temporary appointment, the appointee to hold until a senator may be chosen by popular election.

Under this seventeenth amendment the senators of each state are elected by vote of such persons as are entitled to vote for members of the lower house of the legislature.