Senators should serve for life, and other election ideas from the Founders
Today, Americans will vote in elections around the country. But did you know if alternative ideas from the Founders were used today, there would be 6,000 seats up for re-election in the House, and Senators would be serving for life?
The Founders spent a good deal of time debating how Congress, consisting of two chambers, would be selected. The Great Compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia gave us a Senate with two members assigned to each state, and a House consisting of Representatives directly elected in proportion to the total population of each state.
In the end, the Constitution’s overall guidelines have endured. In 1878, British Prime Minister William Gladstone said the United States Senate was a "remarkable body, the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics” and the House was a model of responsibility.
However, if some ideas proposed by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry and Gouverneur Morris had won favor with the delegates in 1787, there wouldn’t be an election for U.S. Senators and House of Representatives today. The Constitution as ratified in 1789 set age, citizenship and residency requirements for the federal elected offices of President, Senator and Representative. It also performed a balancing act between states from different regions, and of different sizes, as a check against power.
The biggest change from the Founders’ vision of congressional elections was the passage in 1912 and ratification in 1913 of the 17th Amendment. Before 1913, the Constitution allowed state legislators to choose two people to serve in the United States Senate.
Article I, Section 3, read, "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote."
However, by 1912 the majority of states began using direct primaries to allow voters to make legislators choose Senators they wanted, and after a Senate scandal involving bribes and a candidate from Illinois, Congress passed the text of the 17th Amendment.
This significant change from the 1787 Constitution took away the direct influence of state legislators over the United States Senate. That is in contrast to how James Madison spelled out his vision of a Senate and House preserving a balance of power within Congress.
"The House of Representatives will derive its powers from the people of America....The Senate, on the other hand, will derive its powers from the States, as political and co-equal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate,” he wrote in Federalist 39.
The Founders also believed Senators chosen by state legislatures would be able to concentrate on their work without having to deal directly with popular pressures. But they didn’t foresee the significant corruption problems that came into play a century later when Senate seats became part of a patronage process.
Under these original constitutional rules, state legislatures would be moving to approve United States Senators on today’s ballot, not direct voters.
And if Founders like Roger Sherman and Elbridge Gerry also had their way, the House of Representatives would have been appointed by state lawmakers, too, and not by direct popular vote.
The people, Sherman said, “immediately should have as little to do as may be about the Government. They want [lack] information and are constantly liable to be misled.” Gerry believed, “the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”
Gerry also insisted the House of Representatives should be elected every year. Madison thought House elections should be every three years. Madison also expected that one of the three years would consist of the time it took the Representatives to travel to and from the seat of Congress.
And how long should the Senators remain in office? Madison liked the idea of electing Senators every seven years. Two other powerful delegates, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris, wanted United States Senators to serve for life.
And Hamilton also wanted the President to remain in office for life, too.
“Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life or at least during good behavior. Let the Executive also be for life. He appealed to the feelings of the members present whether a term of seven years, would induce the sacrifices of private affairs which an acceptance of public trust would require, so as to ensure the services of the best Citizens. On this plan we should have in the Senate a permanent will, a weighty interest, which would answer essential purposes,” Hamilton said.
The strangest election provision put forth by the Founders came in the original version of the Bill of Rights, which had 12 amendments.
The original First Amendment set a ratio for the number of people elected to the House of Representatives at one Representative for every 30,000 and 50,000 persons in the United States. That would give the current House of Representatives more than 6,000 members.
This proposed amendment fell one state short of being ratified.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.