Seventeenth Amendment

Former astronaut John Glenn speaking to a group of supporters during his campaign for U. S. Senator from Ohio, April 2, 1974.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect in 1913. Prior to its passage, each state's senators were appointed to their position by the state legislature. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Progressives in Ohio and elsewhere began to push for reforms that would make the American political system more democratic. With passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, each state's voters selected for themselves who would represent them in the United States Senate.