The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) to the United States Constitution establishes a nationally standardized minimum age of 18 for participation in state and federal elections. It was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and three-fourths of the states ratified it by July 1, 1971.
Various public officials had supported lowering the voting age during the mid-20th century, but were unable to gain the legislative momentum necessary for passing a constitutional amendment.
The drive to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 grew across the country during the 1960s and was driven in part by the military draft held during the Vietnam War. The draft conscripted young men between the ages of 18 and 21 into the United States Armed Forces, primarily the U.S. Army, to serve in or support military combat operations in Vietnam.[1] This means young men could be required to fight and possibly die for their nation in wartime at 18. However, these same citizens could not have a legal say in the government's decision to wage that war until the age of 21. A youth rights movement emerged in response, calling for a similarly reduced voting age. A common slogan of proponents of lowering the voting age was "old enough to fight, old enough to vote".[2]
Determined to get around inaction on the issue, congressional allies included a provision for the 18-year-old vote in a 1970 bill that extended the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court subsequently held in the case of Oregon v. Mitchell that Congress could not lower the voting age for state and local elections. Recognizing the confusion and costs that would be involved in maintaining separate voting rolls and elections for federal and state contests, Congress quickly proposed and the states ratified the Twenty-sixth Amendment.
Text
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[3]
The framers of the U.S. Constitution did not establish specific criteria for national citizenship or voting qualifications in state or federal elections. Before the Twenty-sixth Amendment, states had the authority to set their own minimum voting ages, which was typically 21 as the national standard.[4]
Senator Harley Kilgore began advocating for a lowered voting age in 1941 in the 77th Congress.[5] Despite the support of fellow senators, representatives, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Congress failed to pass any national change. However, public interest in lowering the voting age became a topic of interest at the local level. In 1943 and 1955 respectively, the Georgia and Kentucky legislatures approved measures to lower the voting age to 18.[6]
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1954 State of the Union address, became the first president to publicly support prohibiting age-based denials of suffrage for those 18 and older.[7] During the 1960s, both Congress and the state legislatures came under increasing pressure to lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. This was in large part due to the Vietnam War, in which many young men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote" was a common slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to 18.
In 1963, the President's Commission on Registration and Voting Participation, in its report to President Lyndon Johnson, encouraged lowering the voting age. Johnson proposed an immediate national grant of the right to vote to 18-year-olds on May 29, 1968.[8] Historian Thomas H. Neale argues that the move to lower the voting age followed a historical pattern similar to other extensions of the franchise; with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, constituents were mobilized and eventually a constitutional amendment passed.[9]
Those advocating for a lower voting age drew on a range of arguments to promote their cause, and scholarship increasingly links the rise of support for a lower voting age to young people's role in the civil rights movement and other movements for social and political change of the 1950s and 1960s.[10][11] Increasing high-school graduation rates and young people's access to political information through new technologies also influenced more positive views of their preparation for the most important right of citizenship.[10]
Between 1942, when public debates about a lower voting age began in earnest, and the early 1970s, ideas about youth agency increasingly challenged the caretaking model that had previously dominated the nation's approaches to young people's rights.[10] Characteristics traditionally associated with youth—idealism, lack of "vested interests", and openness to new ideas—came to be seen as positive qualities for a political system that seemed to be in crisis.[10]
In 1970, Senator Ted Kennedy proposed amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the voting age nationally.[12] On June 22, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required the voting age to be 18 in all federal, state, and local elections.[13] In his statement on signing the extension, Nixon said:
Despite my misgivings about the constitutionality of this one provision, I have signed the bill. I have directed the Attorney General to cooperate fully in expediting a swift court test of the constitutionality of the 18-year-old provision.[14]
Subsequently, Oregon and Texas challenged the law in court, and the case came before the Supreme Court in 1970 as Oregon v. Mitchell.[15] By this time, four states had a minimum voting age below 21: Georgia, Kentucky, Alaska, and Hawaii.[16][17]
Oregon v. Mitchell
During debate of the 1970 extension of the Voting Rights Act, Senator Ted Kennedy argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment allowed Congress to pass national legislation lowering the voting age.[18] In Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966), the Supreme Court had ruled that if Congress acted to enforce the 14th Amendment by passing a law declaring that a type of state law discriminates against a certain class of persons, the Supreme Court would let the law stand if the justices could "perceive a basis" for Congress's actions.[19]
President Nixon disagreed with Kennedy in a letter to the Speaker of the House and the House minority and majority leaders, asserting that the issue was not whether the voting age should be lowered, but how. In his own interpretation of Katzenbach, Nixon argued that to include age as a possible parameter of discrimination would overstretch the concept, and voiced concerns that the damage of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the Voting Rights Act could be disastrous.[20]
In Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), the Supreme Court considered whether the voting-age provisions Congress added to the Voting Rights Act in 1970 were constitutional. The Court struck down the provisions that established 18 as the voting age in state and local elections. However, the Court upheld the provision establishing the voting age as 18 in federal elections. The Court was deeply divided in this case, and a majority of justices did not agree on a rationale for the holding.[21][22]
The decision resulted in states being able to maintain 21 as the voting age in state and local elections, but being required to establish separate voter rolls so that voters between 18 and 21 years old could vote in federal elections.[23]
Opposition
Although the Twenty-sixth Amendment passed faster than any other constitutional amendment, about 17 states refused to pass measures to lower their minimum voting ages after Nixon signed the 1970 extension to the Voting Rights Act.[5] Opponents to extending the vote to youths questioned the maturity and responsibility of people at the age of 18. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, one of the most vocal opponents of a lower voting age from the 1940s through 1970 (and Chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee for much of that period), insisted that youth lacked "the good judgment" essential to good citizenship and that the qualities that made youth good soldiers did not also make them good voters.[10]
Professor William G. Carleton wondered why the vote was proposed for youth at a time when the period of adolescence had grown so substantially rather than in the past when people had more responsibilities at earlier ages.[24] Carleton further criticized the move to lower the voting age, citing American preoccupations with youth in general, exaggerated reliance on higher education, and equating technological savvy with responsibility and intelligence.[25] He denounced the military service argument as well, calling it a "cliche".[26] Considering the ages of soldiers in the Civil War, he asserted that literacy and education were not the grounds for limiting voting; rather, common sense and the capacity to understand the political system grounded voting-age restrictions.[27]
James J. Kilpatrick, a political columnist, asserted that the states were "extorted" into ratifying the Twenty-sixth Amendment.[28] In his article, he claims that by passing the 1970 extension to the Voting Rights Act, Congress effectively forced the States to ratify the amendment lest they be forced to financially and bureaucratically cope with maintaining two voting registers. George Gallup also mentions the cost of registration in his article showing percentages favoring or opposing the amendment, and he draws particular attention to the lower rates of support among adults aged 30–49 and over 50 (57% and 52% respectively) as opposed to those aged 18–20 and 21–29 (84% and 73% respectively).[29]
Senator Birch Bayh's subcommittee on constitutional amendments began hearings on extending voting rights to 18-year-olds in 1968.[30]
After Oregon v. Mitchell, Bayh surveyed election officials in 47 states and found that registering an estimated 10million young people in a separate system for federal elections would cost approximately $20million.[31] Bayh concluded that most states could not change their state constitutions in time for the 1972 election, mandating national action to avoid "chaos and confusion" at the polls.[32]
On March 2, 1971, Bayh's subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee approved the proposed constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18 for all elections.[33]
On March 10, 1971, the Senate voted 94–0 in favor of proposing a constitutional amendment to guarantee the minimum voting age could not be higher than 18.[34][35] On March 23, 1971, the House of Representatives voted 401–19 in favor of the proposed amendment.[36][37]
Having been passed by the 92nd United States Congress, the proposed Twenty-sixth Amendment was sent to the state legislatures for their consideration. Which state was the first to officially ratify the amendment was a matter of dispute: the Minnesota legislature approved the amendment at 3:14 p.m. CST (4:14 p.m. EST), minutes before U.S. Senate president pro temporeAllen J. Ellender officially approved the federal law at approximately 4:35[39] or 4:40pm. EST.[40] Legislators in Delaware, which ratified the amendment at 4:51pm, argued that Minnesota's ratification was invalid because the amendment had not yet been sent to the states.[39][41] The U.S. Senate parliamentarian ruled that Minnesota acted prematurely, but the legality of its ratification of the amendment was never officially challenged.[39]
Ratification was completed on June 30, 1971, after the amendment had been ratified by thirty-eight states. Which state was the 38th to ratify and thus put the amendment into effect has also been disputed. Contemporaneous reports agree that Ohio's House of Representatives cast the decisive vote on the evening of June 30, and that Alabama and North Carolina had ratified the amendment earlier in the day.[42][43] As of 2013, however, the Government Printing Office states that North Carolina did not complete its ratification of the amendment until July 1, at which time it became the 38th state to ratify.[44] Additionally, Alabama governor George Wallace claimed that his state was the 38th to ratify, because he did not sign the ratification resolution until after North Carolina and Ohio completed their ratifications; however, the approval of the governor is not required to ratify an amendment.[45]
Having been ratified by three-fourths of the States (38), the Twenty-sixth Amendment became part of the Constitution. On July 5, 1971, the Administrator of General Services, Robert Kunzig, certified its adoption. President Nixon and Julianne Jones, Joseph W. Loyd Jr., and Paul S. Larimer of the "Young Americans in Concert" also signed the certificate as witnesses. During the signing ceremony, held in the East Room of the White House, Nixon talked about his confidence in the youth of America:
As I meet with this group today, I sense that we can have confidence that America's new voters, America's young generation, will provide what America needs as we approach our bicentennial, not just strength and not just wealth but the 'Spirit of '76' a spirit of moral courage, a spirit of high idealism in which we believe in the American dream, but in which we realize that the American dream can never be fulfilled until every American has an equal chance to fulfill it in their own life.[47]
The amendment was subsequently ratified by 5 more states, bringing the total number of ratifying states to 43:[44]
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the procedure for altering the Constitution. Under Article Five, the process to alter the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments, and subsequent ratification.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would, if added, explicitly prohibit sex discrimination. It was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923 as a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. With the rise of the women's movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha Griffiths in 1971, it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives that year, and by the U.S. Senate in 1972, thus submitting the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided by Article V of the U.S. Constitution. The amendment's ratification in the states remains disputed to today, and it remains legally unratified.
The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution extends the right to participate in presidential elections to the District of Columbia. The amendment grants to the district electors in the Electoral College, as though it were a state, though the district can never have more electors than the least-populous state. How the electors are appointed is to be determined by Congress. The Twenty-third Amendment was proposed by the 86th Congress on June 16, 1960; it was ratified by the requisite number of states on March 29, 1961.
The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from requiring the payment of a poll tax or any other tax to vote in federal elections. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.
The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution addresses issues related to presidential succession and disability.
The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution states that any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of Congress may take effect only after the next election of the House of Representatives has occurred. It is the most recently adopted amendment but was one of the first proposed.
A Congressional power of enforcement is included in a number of amendments to the United States Constitution. The language "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation" is used, with slight variations, in Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, and XXVI.
Civil liberties in the United States are certain unalienable rights retained by citizens of the United States under the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted and clarified by the Supreme Court of the United States and lower federal courts. Civil liberties are simply defined as individual legal and constitutional protections from entities more powerful than an individual, for example, parts of the government, other individuals, or corporations. The explicitly defined liberties make up the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to privacy. There are also many liberties of people not defined in the Constitution, as stated in the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The District of Columbia's at-large congressional district is a congressional district encompassing all of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. Article One of the United States Constitution instructs that only "States" may be represented in the United States Congress. Because the District of Columbia does not meet that criterion, the member elected from the at-large district is not permitted to participate in votes on the floor of the House. Instead, constituents of the seat elect a non-voting delegate to the chamber. Though the delegate lacks full voting privileges, they are permitted to sit on, cast votes in, and chair congressional committees and subcommittees. The delegate may also join party caucuses, introduce legislation, and hire staff to assist with constituent services.
The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would have given the District of Columbia full representation in the United States Congress, full representation in the Electoral College system, and full participation in the process by which the Constitution is amended. It would have also repealed the Twenty-third Amendment, which granted the District of Columbia the same number of electoral votes as that of the least populous state, but gave it no role in contingent elections.
A legal voting age is the minimum age that a person is allowed to vote in a democratic process. For general elections around the world, the right to vote is restricted to adults, and most nations use 18 as their voting age, but for other countries voting age ranges between 16 and 21. Voting age may therefore coincide with a country's age of majority, but in many cases the two are not tied.
Birch Evans Bayh Jr. was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a member of United States Senate from 1963 to 1981. He was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the Indiana House of Representatives; in 1958, he was elected Speaker, the youngest person to hold that office in the state's history. In 1962, he ran for the U.S. Senate, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Homer E. Capehart. Shortly after entering the Senate, he became Chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, and in that role authored two constitutional amendments: the Twenty-fifth—which establishes procedures for an orderly transition of power in the case of the death, disability, or resignation of the President of the United States—and the Twenty-sixth, which lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. He is the first person since James Madison and only non–Founding Father to have authored more than one constitutional amendment. Bayh also led unsuccessful efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminate the United States Electoral College.
Jennings Randolph was an American politician from West Virginia. A Democrat, he was most notable for his service in the United States House of Representatives from 1933 to 1947 and the United States Senate from 1958 to 1985. He was the last living member of the United States Congress to have served during the first 100 days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. Randolph retired in 1985, and was succeeded by Jay Rockefeller.
Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970), was a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the states of Oregon, Texas, Arizona, and Idaho challenged the constitutionality of Sections 201, 202, and 302 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) Amendments of 1970 passed by the 91st United States Congress, and where John Mitchell was the respondent in his role as United States Attorney General. The Supreme Court ruled that the literacy test ban under Section 201, the minimum residency duration requirement for voter registration and the uniform rule for absentee voting in presidential elections under Section 202, and that Congress lowering the voting age in federal elections from 21 to 18 under Section 302 were all constitutional, but that Congress lowering the voting age in state and local elections from 21 to 18 under Section 302 was unconstitutional.
Bills have been introduced in the US Congress on several occasions to amend the US Constitution to abolish or to reduce the power of the Electoral College and to provide for the direct popular election of the US president and vice president.
Age discrimination involves treating a person less favorably than others because of their age. In the United States, all states have passed laws that restrict age discrimination, and age discrimination is restricted under federal laws such as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA).
The U.S. Congress enacted major amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006. Each of these amendments coincided with an impending expiration of some of the Act's special provisions, which originally were set to expire by 1970. However, in recognition of the voting discrimination that continued despite the Act, Congress repeatedly amended the Act to reauthorize the special provisions.
The United States Electoral College was established by the U.S. Constitution, which was adopted in 1789, as part of the process for the indirect election of the President and Vice-President of the United States. The institution is criticized since its establishment and a number of efforts have been made to reform the way it works or abolish it. Any change would require a constitutional amendment. In 1971, one of these attempts was almost successful in being proposed to the States. An interstate compact proposal, which would bypass the requirement for a constitutional amendment, is at 76% of successful completion as of August 2023.
↑ Vaughn, Vanessa E. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS: Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Defining Documents: The 1970s. pp.145–147.
1 2 Neale, Thomas H., "Lowering the Voting Age was not a New Idea", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), p. 35.
↑ Neale, Thomas H., "Lowering the Voting Age was not a New Idea", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), pp. 36–37.
↑ Dwight D. Eisenhower, Public Papers of the Presidents, January 7, 1954, p. 22.
↑ Neale, Thomas H., "Lowering the Voting Age was not a New Idea", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), p. 38.
↑ De Schweinitz, Rebecca (2009). If we could change the world: young people and America's long struggle for racial equality. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN978-0-8078-3235-6. OCLC963537002.
↑ Kennedy, Edward M., "The Time Has Come to Let Young People Vote", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), pp. 56–64.
↑ Graham, Fred P., in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), p. 67.
↑ Nixon, Richard, "Changing the Voting age will Require a Constitutional Amendment", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), pp. 70–77.
↑ Carleton, William G., "Teen Voting Would Accelerate Undesirable Changes in the Democratic Process", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), p. 47.
↑ Carleton, William G., "Teen Voting Would Accelerate Undesirable Changes in the Democratic Process", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), p. 48–49.
↑ Carleton, William G., "Teen Voting Would Accelerate Undesirable Changes in the Democratic Process", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), p. 49.
↑ Carleton, William G., "Teen Voting Would Accelerate Undesirable Changes in the Democratic Process", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), pp. 50–51.
↑ Kilpatrick, James J., "The States are being Extorted into Ratifying the Twenty-sixth Amendment", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), pp. 123–127.
↑ Gallup, George, "The Majority of Americans Favor the Twenty-sixth Amendment", in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia (New York: Greenhaven Press, 2010), pp. 128–130.
↑ Graham, Fred P. (May 15, 1968). "Voting Age of 18 Is Supported By Four Senators at a Hearing". The New York Times. p.23.
↑ Sperling, Godfrey Jr. (February 13, 1971). "Bayh peers into dual-voting thicket: Fraud possibilities weighed 'Intolerable burden'". The Christian Science Monitor.
↑ MacKenzie, John P. (February 13, 1971). "Bayh Favors Amendment To End Vote-at-18 'Chaos'". The Washington Post. pp.A2.
↑ "Amendment on Vote at 18 Gains a Step". The Chicago Tribune. United Press International. March 3, 1971. pp.C1.
↑ Senate, Journal of the Senate, 92nd Congress, 1st session, 1971. S. S.J. Res. 7
↑ "House Gets 18-Vote After Senate OKs It". The Evening Press (Binghamton, New York). Associated Press. March 11, 1971. p.12.
↑ House, Journal of the House, 92nd Congress, 1st session, 1971. H. S.J. Res. 7
↑ "Senate Joint Resolution 1". South Dakota Legislature. Pierre, South Dakota: SD Legislative Research Council. Archived from the original on April 29, 2023. Retrieved April 29, 2023.
Further reading
Caplan, Sheri J. Old Enough: How 18-Year-Olds Won the Vote & Why it Matters. Heath Hen, 2020. ISBN978-1-7354-9300-8.
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