At the founding, Senators were elected by state legislatures. If
the Senate believed that legislators in a given state had been
bribed into voting for a particular candidate, the Senate could
refuse to seat him.Amar and Chafetz need to deal with Powell v.
McCormack, in which the Supreme Court said that the House did
not have the power under Article I, Section 5 to refuse to seat
Adam Clayton Powell. That case focuses on judging
"qualifications," and the Court said that only relates to the
qualifications specified in the Constitution — age, citizenship,
and residency. Beyond those 3 qualifications, the people had the
power to choose the representative they wanted. But Powell was
clearly the people's choice, so what do you do with Powell when
the governor appoints the new member? For an accurate analogy
for the Burris appointment, imagine if the problem with Powell
hadn't been that the members of Congress thought he was corrupt,
but that they thought there had been a fraud in the election.
Because of the word "