What do transportation laws, public education, and welfare programs have in common? All of them are not instituted solely by the state governments but by the central government. These are just a few examples that show the power of the central government has dramatically increased from when it was first instituted (Nosotro). There are many factors that have fueled this increase, but one major cause is the Seventeenth Amendment. The Seventeenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in the early 1900’s and called for the direct election of senators. Ironically, this amendment, which was sold as an expansion of democracy, greatly increased the power of the United States federal government.
In order to understand how this amendment has increased the power of the federal government, one must have a good understanding of the background to this amendment. It was not proposed and ratified due to a fanatical last minute whim of a few senators. Rather, a combination of bribes, scandals, electoral deadlocks, malapportioned legislatures, and the changing of the political tastes combined to make direct election of senators a popular option at the turn of the century (Schiller 2). At the time the House of Representatives was the only body directly elected by the people, and senators were elected by their respective state legislatures rather than by straight vote from their constituents (Keesee 51). The idea for the direct election of senators was not a new idea. Reformers as far back as the 1800’s were interested in limiting the role of state legislatures in Senate elections. Even Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States, proposed an amendment that would elect senators through popular election (Levin 44).
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...l. American Government. 2nd ed. Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2010. Print.
Levin, Mark R. The Liberty Amendments. New York City, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2013. Print.
Nosotro, Rit. “The Centralization of the USA Government.” Hyper History. HyperHistory.net, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
“Repeal the 17th Amendment.” The Campaign to Restore Federalism. RestoreFederalism.org, Apr. 2009. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Schiller, Wendy and Charles Stewart III. U.S. Senate Elections before 1914. April 8, 2004. TS. The Midwest Political Science Association Chicago, Illinois.
Stephenson, Howard. “Overcoming the flaws of the 17th Amendment – direct election of U.S. senators.” Enterprise/Salt Lake City 30 Jan. 2006: 23. MasterFILE Main Edition. Web. 6 Sept. 2013.
Wakeman, Raffaela. “United States Senate Elections before 1914.” MIT Undergraduate Research Journal 14 (2006): 22-24. Web. 6 Sept. 2013.
Throughout the second chapter Levin states that there is a very small turnover in Congress and each time that election time comes into play, most of the same people are elected for position (Levin 19-32). He believes that while term limits are not enough to balance the power of the governing systems it is a step in the right direction and are necessary and a critical building block (Levin 22). In his next chapter Levin proposes an amendment that is to restore the Senate (Levin 33). This amendment would repeal the seventeenth amendment and make it to where all Senators are chosen by their state legislatures as prescribed by Article I (Levin 33). Prior to the seventeenth amendment the Senate had been chosen by legislators of each state (Levin 34). Throughout the chapter he goes on to talk about how the Framers of our nation intended the Senate to be chosen and also how we have branched away from that. He discusses several different people’s opinions on how it should be ran and also how it should be managed. He states that John Dickinson made a notion that the Senate should be chosen by the state legislatures (Levin
Keso, Edward E.. The senatorial career of Robert Latham Owen,. Gardenvale, P.Q., Can.: Garden city press, 1938.
...g the power that voters had in both local and state politics. The initiative would let a voter suggest a law that they believed should be passed and would then be voted on at the election, the referendum said that “voter-propose public measures are voted upon”, and lastly recalls would let “voters remove an elected official from office through a ballot box”. The Seventeenth Amendment would be added to the constitution in 1913 that would grant the right to directly vote U.S. Senators.
Grace Abbott, Ph.M. (Political Science) 1909 [SSA Centennial Celebration Profiles of Distinction Series]. (n.d.). In Chicago/SSA/Centenial. Retrieved March 6, 2011, from The University of Chicago website: http://ssacentennial.uchicago.edu/features/features-abbott-grace.shtml
In order to understand and analyze the forces that shaped politics during this time period, political changes must first be examined. One of the biggest changes during this time period was the change in the number of voters. Between 1812 and 1840, the percentage of eligible voters in the United States presidential elections almost tripled, increasing from 26.9 to 80.2 percent while the percentage of states allowing voters to choose presidential electors more than doubled, rising from 44.4 to 95.8 percent, shown in Document A. By 1840, Rhode Island was the only state that didn’t allow all free men to vote.
MARTIN KELLY, Overview of United States Government and Politics Foundation and Principles, 2011, retrieved February 21st 2011 from http://americanhistory.about.com/od/governmentandpolitics/a/amgovoverview.htm
Ken Kollman, The American Political System, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2012), 25, 322-323, 330, 449.
Shugart, Matthew. "Elections: The American Process of Selecting a President: A Comparative Perspective." Presidential Studies, 34, 3 (September 2004): 632-656.
Foner, E. (2012). Give Me Liberty! An American History. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company
Ferling, John. “1796: The First Real Election.” In Visions of America’s Past, edited by William
With the Electoral College in place, the United States remains a true Representative Democracy. By having electors, who are nominated to cast their vote for the president, the nation distances itself from a Direct Democracy (Longley). While creating the nation, many people believe the founders were strictly concerned with power to the citizens. However, they truly did not give the people much “political credit” (Longley). In fact, the “framers expressly ejected” the idea of popular vote, and felt using state electors was the only fair method of electing the president (Gringer 2008). They also understood “it would be unlikely for a candidate to have a nationwide presence among the people” (Patel, 2012) Delegate Elbridge Gerry believed a plan using popular vote was “radically vicious” and feared that the “people are uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing men” (Gerry 1787). They framers understood many people do not have a lot of information on, or background in politi...
In writing the Constitution, the Framers were aiming to rectify the states’ inadequate attempt at establishing a democratic government. They wanted to create a stronger government while simultaneously keeping it a democracy and protecting the Peoples’ power within it. Wary of monarchy, they intended to constrain their envisioned government’s power by creating checks and balances between and within its branches. Did they do a good enough job? In Section I, we see the Framers’ intentions for the legislature’s lower chamber to be the government’s source of democracy. Section II reveals the absence of an essential check on the legislative branch, and how leaving the legislature unchecked in regard to its own elections threatens democracy in the Framers’ government. Section III shows how my amendment creates the necessary checks to address this threat, and thus protects democracy and the People in the Framers’ government.
Kraig, R.A. (2000). The 1912 Election and the Rhetorical Foundations of the Liberal State. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 2000, pp. 363-395
According to the Federalists in the early stages of the American republic, a strong central government was necessary to provide uniform supervision to the states thus aiding in the preservation of the Union. This necessity for a more organized central government was a result of the ineffectiveness of the Article of Confederation’s government that was without a unifying government body. One component of this philosophy was the creation of an executive and other federal branche...
Byrd, Robert C. The Senate, 1789-1989: Addresses on the History of the US Senate, Vol. 1. (New York: Bernan Associates, 1989).