The Seventeenth Amendment

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such 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.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Essentially what we are looking at here is the creation of the actual election and appointments of the Senators that represent each state.  We can see that the term limits for the Senators is defined as well as what will happen in the event a seat is vacant.  Each state of course is represented by two Senators so as to have a total of 100 Senators in the Senate.  This is also the introduction of a clause in the amendment which affects the already elected members of the Senate.  Late in amendments we will see something similar about when the amendment takes effect etc.

Here we see a cartoon about the 17th amendment and the affects that it will have on the current congress in session.  Essentially a majority of the populace thought that the encumbrance of the current Senators in the Senate would be long lived in that they didn't need to get "elected out" of office.  They would stay until the seat was vacated was the general thought.  Although this didn't happen across the board there were several Senators who took advantage of this.

 

 

As we can see from this brief explanation by this video we see that the election of Senators was now by a popular vote.  We know that the popular vote can be directed to certain persons, or certain activities and bills, so why not direct it towards getting a certain person elected.  The previous clause in the Constitution appointed Senators by the State Legislatures since they had the interest of the state at heart.  So now we have Senators elected by popular vote who have guided interests at heart instead of the state as a whole.  Voting "changes this" but as we can see voting in some cases has no point in changing some things.