Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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Amendment XXVI (the Twenty-sixth Amendment) of the United States Constitution was ratified on July 1, 1971.
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[edit] Text
The text of the 26th Amendment states:
| 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. |
[edit] Interpretation and history
The amendment prohibits both the federal government and the state governments from using an age greater than 18 as a qualification for voting.
The amendment was first introduced to Congress by West Virginia U.S. Rep. Jennings Randolph in 1941. Randolph argued that people who were old enough to fight and die for the country during wars should also have the right to vote. Randolph left the House in 1947, but became a senator in 1959 and began to introduce the amendment at every session.
Suffrage to those 18 and older was endorsed by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. A law was passed in 1970 which was similar to the amendment, but the government of Oregon challenged it in court (Oregon v. Mitchell), and the Supreme Court overturned the parts of the law which required states to register 18-year-olds for state elections. By this time, five states had already granted citizens under the age of 21 the right to vote (Georgia and Kentucky observed 18 as the minimum voting age, Alaska 19, and Hawaii and New Hampshire 20), but many citizens wanted all states to do so.
Congress and the state legislatures felt increasing pressure to pass the Constitutional amendment because of the Vietnam War, in which many young men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to fight, and died. The idea was that people who were old enough to be allowed (or forced) to join the military should have a say in the selection of the civilian government that determines when and how military force is used. With this in his mind, President Lyndon Johnson had asked Congress to propose an amendment lowering the voting age to 18 in the summer of 1968. The amendment passed through Congress when it was reintroduced by Randolph in 1971, and within months passed three-fourths of the state legislatures, quicker than any other amendment. The 26th Amendment was formally certified by President Richard Nixon on July 1, 1971.
A semi-intended consequence of the 26th Amendment was that after its passage, one state after another then lowered the minimum age for exercising most other adult rights, such as marrying and signing contracts without parental consent, to 18 as well (Mississippi being the last); by the end of the 1980s all fifty states had done so.
However, because the amendment applies only to voting, many states have higher age limits for other rights; Utah's minimum age for tobacco use is 19, Nevada and other states have a limit of 21 years for gambling, and though many states had lowered their drinking ages in the 1970s, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 obliged states to set a limit of 21 years for the purchase of alcohol under threat of losing 10% of federal highway construction money.
[edit] See also
- Voting Rights amendments in United States:
- 15th Amendment: Grants equal rights to all male citizens, without respect to race or former slave status
- 19th Amendment: Equal voting rights without respect to sex
- 24th Amendment: Abolishes poll tax requirement
- Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland, lowered voting age to 18
- Age of majority
