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Nicholas Hom

As Hamilton stated"'Suppose an Article had been introduced into the Constitution, empowering the United States to regulate the elections of the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State Governments?'"This statement by hamilton is entirely correct and pinpoints the exact point that he is trying to convince the American people of. If they, the people, would condemn this supposed article, then they should also condemn an article that would do the same thing, but in reverse. An article that would have allowed the states to regulate the elections of the federal government. This would the union at a great rick as Hamilton notes: "“Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating elections for the National Government, in the hands of the State Legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy. They could at any moment annihilate it, by neglecting to provide for the choice of persons to administer its affairs.“"If an abuse of power would be condemned one way, then it should be condemned the other way as well. If the states were allowed to regulate the elections of the Federal House of Representatives then the legislatures of a few important states could enter into a conspiracy to prevent an election, and then this could result in the Union's destruction.

Hamilton was not fully against the state legislatures having some power over the federal government. He fully defended the state's' power to appoint members of the senate. He saw this as a necessary check on the power of the federal government. As he states “So far as that construction may expose the Union to the possibility of injury from the State Legislatures, it is an evil; but it is an evil which could not have been avoided without excluding the States, in their political capacities, wholly from a place in the organization of the National Government.If this had been done, it would doubtless have been interpreted into an entire dereliction of the Fœderal principle; and would certainly have deprived the State Governments of that absolute safeguard.” Hamilton said this because each state only had the power to appoint two senators, and no more, that no single state or even a few states would be able to destroy the union by not appointing senators. The states would have to work together to be able to destroy the union in this way and that is a scenario that extremely unlikely to happen. According to Gleicher, The  phrase  “absolute  safeguard”  is  perhaps  the  strongest  expression of the principle for which Rossum contends. But even here one should be mindful of the rhetorical context. The state power of appointment  is  susceptible  to  an  obvious  and  undeniable  abuse—refusal to cooperate—but this is a risk that must be tolerated, be-cause the alternative, of lodging this power elsewhere, could readily lend itself to an even more unsettling “interpretation.” However, in 1913 the 17th amendment was passed and signed into law. This amendment effectively destroyed Hamilton’s argument on the matter and the necessary evil that he saw as a check by the states on the power of the federal government. Specifically, Article 1, Amendment 17, “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.”