Ian’s Legal Fact of the Week 9/21/15: State Suffrage

The provision in Article I of the Constitution specifying that each state shall have two senators elected by the state legislature was of such importance to the Philadelphia delegation that they insisted it not be subject to amendment, hence the language stating that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate”. This provision was amended, however, in 1913, by the Seventeenth Amendment which provided for the popular election of senators.

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