Who elects U.S. senators?

Why this is the answer

Senators are elected by the voters of their own state. The official answer is citizens from their state: in a Senate race the whole state votes, and the result is decided statewide, not district by district. It was not designed that way. The original text of Article I, Section 3 said senators would be chosen by the legislature of each state. Federalist No. 62 praised that method for giving the state governments a role in forming the federal government. The 17th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1912 and ratified in 1913, replaced it. Its first sentence repeats the old one almost word for word but swaps the key phrase: senators are now elected by the people of each state. The 2008 civics lessons put the change simply: before 1913 the state legislatures elected senators, and now all the voters in a state elect them directly. The amendment also sets who may vote. Anyone qualified to vote for the larger house of their state legislature may vote for senator. And it covers vacancies. When a seat opens before the term ends, the legislature may let the governor make a temporary appointment until the people fill the seat by election. That is the one way to sit in the Senate without having been elected, and only for a while. Candidates, for their part, must be at least 30 and live in the state they represent, and running for federal office is a right reserved to U.S. citizens. Applicants who know a little history sometimes answer "the state legislature," which was correct before 1913 and is wrong now. Others say "the governor," who can only fill a vacancy, and only temporarily. Keep the modern rule in mind: the people of the state choose the people who represent the state.