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The three classes of United States Senators are made up of 33 or 34 Senate seats each. The purpose of the classes is to determine which Senate seats will be up for election in a given year. The three groups are staggered so that one of them is up for election every two years, rather than having all 100 seats up for election at once. For example, the 33 Senate seats of Class 1 were elected in 2012, the 33 seats of Class 2 were up for election in 2014, and the 34 seats of Class 3 are scheduled for re-election in 2016. The three classes were established by Article I, Section 3, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The actual division was originally performed by the Senate in May 1789 by lot, with a rule being that a state's two seats had to be in different classes.〔 Whenever a new state subsequently joined the union, its two senate seats were permanently assigned to two different classes by coin toss, while keeping the three classes as close to the same size as possible.〔 A senator's description as junior or senior senator is not related to his or her class. Rather, a state's senior senator is the one with the greater seniority in the Senate. This is mostly based on length of service. ==Historical division== When the Founding Fathers agreed to give six-year terms to Senators, they also decided to stagger the elections, so that a third of the Senate was up for election every two years. With this staggered turnover, the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure stability in the Senate, and encourage Senators to deliberate measures over time, rather than risk a rapid turnover of the entire chamber every six years. At the same time, they wanted more frequent elections, as opposed to waiting every six years, to prevent Senators from permanently combining for "sinister purposes".〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=The Senate and the United States Constitution )〕 The three classes of the Senate were then specified by Article I, Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution: This was achieved in May 1789, several weeks after the first Senate assembled. Only 20 senators from 10 states were present; North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the U.S. Constitution, and New York, because of its late ratification, had not yet selected its Senators. The Senate first divided the members into three classes, on 14 May. On the following day, 15 May, the term expiration of each class was determined by drawing lots.〔 Upon the expiration of a senator's term of any length, someone starts a new six-year term as senator (based on election by the state legislatures until the Seventeenth Amendment required direct popular election of Senators). Because each state is represented by two Senators, regardless of population, each Senate class collectively represents a different number of people than each other Senate class. Since the early 19th century, Class 2 Senators have cumulatively represented between 50-60% of the population of the United States, while Senators from each of the other two classes have cumulatively represented approximately 70-75% of the population of the United States. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Classes of United States Senators」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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