Proposal in Congress.
In 1911, the House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 39 proposing a constitutional amendment for direct election of senators. The original resolution passed by the House contained the following clause:
The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators shall be as prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof.
This so-called "race rider" clause would have strengthened the powers of states over senatorial elections and weakened those of Congress by overriding Congress's power to override state laws affecting the manner of senatorial elections.
Since the turn of the century, most blacks in the South, and many poor whites, had been disenfranchised by state legislatures passing constitutions with provisions that were discriminatory in practice. This meant that their millions of population had no political representation. Most of the South had one-party states. When the resolution came before the Senate, a substitute resolution, one without the rider, was proposed by Joseph L Bristow of Kansas. It was adopted by a vote of 64 to 24, with four not voting. Nearly a year later, the House accepted the change. The conference report that would become the Seventeenth Amendment was approved by the Senate 42 to 36 on April 12, 1912, and by the House 238 to 39, with 110 not voting on May 13, 1912.
