Why were senators originally chosen by state legislators?
The Framers debated four methods of choosing the Senators: by the House of Rpresentatives; by the national executive (President); by the state legislatures; or by the general public. They settled on the state legislatures because they felt each state’s Senators should be chosen by the states themselves but that the Senate was too important to be left to the general public. In fact, several framers thought the general public was not much better than a mob.
