The 17th Amendment enabled the blurring of state boundaries by dissolving the federal separation of powers. When the 17th Amendment was passed at the start of the progressive era in 1913, it started to shift the United States from a dual federalist system to a cooperative federalist system. Progressive era political scientist, Charles Merriam, explained “Under our Federal system there must be a sharing of powers between the national, interstate, and state authorities.” Just like many other politicians and political scientist of the time, Merriam believed that centralization of controls was a way to solve any conflicts that the state governments and federal government had. Prior to the 17th Amendment being passed, there were Senate election deadlocks. Some State Legislatures could not agree on who to send to the Senate, so they only had one Senator. At its worst, elections were deadlocked across 20 states, resulting in 20 vacant seats. The States saw this as a problem; they were alr