popular election of senators

     The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1913,  provides for the popular election of senators.  Before passage of the seventeenth amendment, senators had been elected by the legislatures of each state. The senate was originally meant to provide something like a buffer between popular elections and the federal government. The founders of the United States believed in democracy, but within limits. When the United States Constitution was ratified, only white males over 21 who owned property could vote. Free white males, that is, which had a specific meaning--no indentured person or apprentice or prisoner could vote. It is unlikely that an indentured servant or apprentice would have had enough property to vote, anyway.  Qualifications for voting in federal elections were left up to the states, so they varied a bit from state to state. According to the federal Constitution, anyone who could vote in a local election ( for the state House of Representatives, or lower branch of the legislature ) could vote in a national election.