Feingold Constitutional Amendment Ending
Gubernatorial Appointments
to Senate Vacancies
The controversies surrounding some of the
recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats in
Illinois, New York, Colorado, and Delaware made it painfully
clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must
end. The way some of these situations were handled was alarmingly
undemocratic and included behind-the-scenes deal-making that
left voters out in the cold.
That is why I introduced a constitutional amendment to prohibit
gubernatorial appointments to fill a Senate vacancy. That’s
how we’ve done it in Wisconsin for nearly a century. The most
basic tenet of our democratic system is the election of the
government by the governed. In 1913, thanks to the efforts
of Wisconsin’s own “Fighting” Bob La Follette, the Seventeenth
Amendment to the Constitution was ratified giving the citizens
of this country the power to directly elect their U.S. Senators.
But the amendment left open a loophole which allowed governors
to appoint U.S. Senators in the event of a vacancy. It is
clear that we need to close that loophole and make sure the
people always have a voice in who represents them in Congress.
