Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/constitution/amendment-17/index.php
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 17:53:59+00:00

Document:
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
The ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment was the outcome of increasing popular dissatisfaction with the operation of the originally established method of electing Senators. As the franchise became exercisable by greater numbers of people, the belief became widespread that Senators ought to be popularly elected in the same manner as Representatives. Acceptance of this idea was fostered by the mounting accumulation of evidence of the practical disadvantages and malpractices attendant upon legislative selection, such as deadlocks within legislatures resulting in vacancies remaining un-filled for substantial intervals, the influencing of legislative selection by corrupt political organizations and special interest groups through purchase of legislative seats, and the neglect of other duties by legislators as a consequence of protracted electoral contests.
1 1 G. HAYNES, THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 79-117 (1938).
2 United States v. Aczel, 219 F. 917 (D. Ind. 1915) (citing Ex Parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884)).
3 Chapman v. King, 154 F.2d 460 (5th Cir. 1946), cert. denied, 327 U.S. 800 (1946).
4 MacDougall v. Green, 355 U.S. 281 (1948), overruled on equal protection grounds in Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814 (1969). See Forssenius v. Harman, 235 F. Supp. 66 (E.D.Va. 1964) aff'd on other grounds, 380 U.S. 529 (1965), where a three-judge District Court held that the certificate of residence requirement established by the Virginia legislature as an alternative to payment of a poll tax in federal elections was an additional qualification to voting in violation of the Seventeenth Amendment and Art. I, § 2.

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