American voters and the 17th Amendment, at least when it comes to the House of Lords, er...the Senate.
The 17th Amendment was one of the three legs of what I call “the Quiet Revolution of 1913” that did more to transform America than anything else. The three legs are:
1. 16th Amendment, ratified Feb. 3, 1913
2. 17th Amendment, ratified April 8, 1913
3. Federal Reserve Act, signed by President Wilson December 1913
The 16th Amendment and Federal Reserve Act created the fiscal basis for the immense administrative state, while the 17th Amendment removed the States’ one institutional barrier in the National Government that could curb it’s growth.
Unlike most other revolutions, it took a while for the effects of the Quiet Revolution to blossom; a series of Court cases, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, United States v. Carolene Products, Wickard v. Filburn and later Chevron USA v. Natural Resource Defense Council, eventually removed all judicial barriers to the growth of Leviathan. But such decisions were inevitable once the government gained nearly unlimited access to money, and all political institutional impediments to its growth were removed.