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.
Passed by Congress March 23, 1971. Ratified July 1, 1971.
Note: Amendment 14, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 1 of the 26th amendment.
Amendment XXVI:
Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
18-Year Olds Right to Vote
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Perhaps one of the few instances where the issue of congressional power was litigated prior to passage of the amendment, section 2 of the 26th amendment has this distinction. Many Americans today do not realize that the debate over the minimum age to vote in the U.S. began during World War II and the issue continued to grow even as the War wound down. President Dwight Eisenhower was the first U.S. president to officially endorse lowering the voting age to 18. For most of its history, the U.S. had adopted 21 as the minimum age.
President Eisenhower, like a growing number of American policymakers, recognized a clear disparity between 18 year olds being old enough to fight for their country in war and yet they were not considered responsible enough to cast a vote in electing the representatives that could decide the policy. This sensible argument was powerful enough to persuade Georgia and Kentucky to lower the minimum voting age during World War II.
Unfortunately the process of state-by-state reform didn’t appear to be moving fast enough for its advocates. By the time of the Vietnam War, it had become increasingly clear that Congress had to take some action in this area. Between the budget pressures, anti-war efforts, and the need to rely on the draft, Washington policymakers determined that they should act affirmatively to lower the voting age.
Taking the lead nearly 20 years after serving as Vice-President to President Eisenhower, President Nixon agreed to sign a law that amended the Voting Rights Act to lower the voting age to 18 for all Federal, State, and local elections. There was a problem with this solution: it didn’t meet Supreme Court muster.
The act signed into law in 1970 was challenged in the federal courts. In Oregon v. Mitchell the Supreme Court declared that the Congress didn’t have the authority to set a minimum age requirement for voting in state and local elections.
President Nixon would then call upon Congress to adopt a Constitutional amendment to remedy the matter. It passed Congress in March 1971 and would set a record – 4 short months – as the fastest ratification of any of the amendments to the Constitution. By July, President Nixon would certify that the amendment had indeed been ratified.
Horace Cooper is a legal commentator and the Director of the Center for Law and Regulation at the Institute for Liberty
June 12, 2012
Essay #82
Amendment XXVI:
The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
The Twenty-Sixth Amendment: Empowering America’s Youth
Throughout our nation’s history the right to vote has remained a cornerstone of cherished civil liberties and democratic processes. This right, however, was granted to select members of the populace until a century and a half ago. The end of the Civil War brought about 3 “Reconstruction Amendments” aimed to bring constitutionally granted “blessings of liberty” to the black male populace – the 3rd of these, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, granted voting rights regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Half a century later, women were also granted the right to vote, after various organizations staged a protracted series of processions and protests. Several countries, such as Sweden, Finland (then known as the Grand Duchy (Dutch-ee)), Britain and Australia, had already forged ground in this area at the end of the 19th century. The resulting 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, which prohibited state and federal sex-based voting restrictions. Additional suffrage privileges were granted with ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964 – which guaranteed that voting rights of citizens
“shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”
Age was the next obstacle to overcome.
The Constitution allowed states to dictate voting qualifications, subject to restrictions incorporated into Amendments. One of these Amendments, the 14th, mandated an age 21 minimum for male suffrage, with the caveat of withholding any state’s representation in Congress should this right be denied. With the onset of World War II, many young men and women under age 21 entered military service, sparking discussions about reducing the voting age to 18. It seemed ironic that one could be called up for military service at 18 and denied the right to vote for the country one was entrusted to defend. So, in 1942, four Congressmen introduced resolutions to reduce the age to 18. Over 150 proposals were initiated, some setting the age to 19. In the early 1950s, Senate debated one of “18” resolutions, but it failed by a vote of 34 to 24. By the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was rapidly escalating and thousands of young Americans enlisted, or, were drafted for active duty overseas. As of 1968, 25% of the troops were under age 21 and made up an even higher percentage of casualties. ‘Old enough to fight, old enough to vote’ became a mantra for the burgeoning Baby Boom generation.
The resolutions for lowering the voting age began to gain momentum once again. Congress held hearings on the subject between 1968 and 1970. These hearings touched on the link between military service and voting, but primarily focused on the increased educational levels of modern youth. Their discussions also focused on the ever-increasing responsibilities of the 18-21 year old demographic: attending college, driving automobiles, drinking alcohol (in subsequent years, states raised this age to 21), holding jobs, starting families, being tried as adults in court. Concurrently, in a narrow 5-4 vote, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970) that 18 year olds could vote in federal elections, but not in those held at the state, or, local levels.
States now were tasked with evaluating their suffrage-age laws, and sixteen states did just that in 1970. Six states lowered the age and ten remained unswayed. Other states began to weigh administrative and cost advantages in matching the new federal framework. Congress then added a provision to the Voting Rights Act in 1970 setting the minimum voting age to 18 for both national and state elections, arguing it had broad power to protect voting rights under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment. With that, Congress accelerated its commitment to incorporate the youth suffrage movement within the framework of the Constitution. Congress passed the 26th Amendment March 23, 1971. In the fastest ratification process on record (107 days), three fourths of the states ratified this landmark proposal July 1, 1971.
Note: Amendment 14, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 1 of the 26th amendment.
Ms. Janice R. Brenman is a former prosecutor now in private practice in Los Angeles. She has commented in major legal publications on the subject of legal reform and celebrity influence on the legal system. She has also appeared in medical malpractice, products liability and complex civil litigation, and is well versed in all forms of discovery. From 1999 to 2000, Ms. Brenman was a City Prosecutor and Community Preservationist. She clerked for the Honorable Rupert J. Groh(Grow), Jr., of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Ms. Brenman also worked researching, writing and editing under a Nobel Prize winning laureate.
June 11, 2012
Essay #81
Amendment XXVI
1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The final (or, more accurately, most recent) amendment to the US Constitution is the 26th. It lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18 years of age.
The founders initially left it up to the several states to determine various eligibility requirements for voting. But following nearly a century of reform, including the passage of the 19th Amendment ensuring suffrage for women and various civil rights laws operating under the auspices of the 14th amendment, national leaders began to grapple with pressure to lower the overall voting age nationally from the generally-accepted 21 to 18.
President Eisenhower was the first chief executive to publicly support such a move, but Congress’ attempts to nationally require states to do so were met with constitutional opposition from the Supreme Court. The High Court found that Congress had exceeded its authority under the Constitution, and that amending the Constitution would be required.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t simply the anti-war movement that was pressuring national leaders to lower the voting age. Young adults from all walks of life, who had already assumed the full mantle of adulthood (marriage, children, sole self-support, etc), were eager to ensure that they had a voice in public policy. But it was the anti-war movement that captured the popular sentiment, with the concept that “if I’m old enough to be drafted to fight for my country, I ought to be able to vote those policies facing my country.”
The issue of the draft isn’t a small one, either. The fact that young men were facing the possibility of involuntarily putting themselves in harm’s way is a compelling justification for allowing these same young men a voice in their own futures.
By 1971, the White House had become a champion of the push to lower the voting age as well—which, given the ire the anti-war movement felt towards the Nixon administration, was nothing short of ironic. In fact, in one of the oddest instances of changing places, The New York Times, incapable of seeing anything good coming from the Nixon White House, came out in opposition to the lowered voting age—stating that young people were simply too immature intellectually to be good voters.
But the proposed amendment did pass Congress, and Nixon signed it in March of 1971. The amendment rocketed through state legislatures, and by July 1 it had been ratified.
The force and effect, however, has been somewhat limited. Rates of voting for the 18-21 year old segment of the population was at its highest for the 1972 election. After that, even considering important contributions in the 1984, 1996, and 2008 Presidential elections, voter turnout among this demographic has remained tremendously low. Despite this fact, there are some calling for lowering the voting age even more—to 16![1]
It is doubtful that this will happen, given a host of factors—including one trend that has run parallel through the 40 year history of the under-21 vote.
While there may have been some justification in the late-1960s and early-1970s for lowering the age due to the factors facing a disenfranchised segment of the population, those factors have continued to shift. Not only do we have an all-volunteer military, wherein nobody is forced to join without their own-free choice, but the age we consider “adult” today continues to increase.
Currently, for instance, we have the greatest percentage of individuals under 30 living in their parents’ homes. Few have families, fewer own homes. It has become acceptable to consider adolescence to extend well-beyond age 18, and some believe it to extend beyond 30 years of age!
This belief became enshrined now in federal public policy as well. One of the central issues in Obamacare is the mandate to health insurance companies that they allow parents to put their children on their insurance plans up to the age of 26. I believe such a consideration would have been unthinkable in the era when the 26th Amendment was being considered.
Nobody is suggesting that the voting age be raised again—though many believe that young people do squander their franchise rights. What is certain is that the 26th Amendment is illustrative of the idea that pressing issues of the day ought not drive the amendment process. Rarely does such tinkering with the founders’ vision produce the results that we want.
[1] This organization, the American Youth Rights Association, believes that voter turnout will increase, and that because young people may retain better knowledge of historical facts than the general population, that they will be a more informed segment of the voting electorate.
Andrew Langer is President of the Institute for Liberty http://www.instituteforliberty.org/