Twenty-sixth amendment
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution lowers the voting age to eighteen, a significant change that reflects the evolving views on youth participation in democracy. The push for this amendment gained momentum during the 1950s and 1960s, notably influenced by the military draft during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, which compelled many young men to serve despite their inability to vote. This inconsistency sparked public debate, famously encapsulated in the 1965 song "Eve of Destruction," highlighting the irony of being old enough to fight but not to vote.
In 1970, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act to lower the voting age, leading to legal challenges that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. The Court upheld the right to vote at eighteen for federal elections, but initially did not extend this ruling to state and local elections. This created complications for electoral logistics and costs, prompting Congress to propose a constitutional amendment to standardize the voting age across all elections. Ratified in a rapid three months, the Twenty-sixth Amendment enfranchised a new generation of voters, influencing political strategies and party dynamics in the years that followed. The amendment is a landmark decision emphasizing the importance of youth voices in shaping democratic governance.
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Twenty-sixth amendment
Identification Constitutional amendment lowering the voting age in federal, state, and local elections from twenty-one to eighteen
Date Ratified on June 30, 1971
The ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution put an end to a long-festering controversy over what precise age properly determined civic and political maturity for U.S. citizens.
While the debate over granting the vote to eighteen-year-old citizens was long-standing, it gained impetus in the 1950’s and 1960’s—particularly in the wake of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The peacetime draft under the Selective Service Act inducted, for the most part, males right out of high school. The point was made that, while these young men were obligated to serve in the military and were considered mature enough to participate in warfare, they were still being denied the right to participate in the electoral process. The issue of nonrepresentation was succinctly expressed in Barry McGuire’s popular 1965 song Eve of Destruction: “You’re old enough to kill, but not for voting.”
During the 1950’s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower openly endorsed the idea, and the issue of lowering the voting age to eighteen became part of the general clamor for reform in the next decade. In 1970, Congress passed an amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, mandating the lowering of the voting age to eighteen in federal, state, and local elections.
This move was challenged almost immediately in the courts, and on October 19, 1970, the case of Oregon v. Mitchell was argued before the Supreme Court. The Court ruled by a 5-4 vote, on December 21, 1970, that Congress was within its rights in lowering the age to eighteen in federal elections, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but another 5-4 decision ruled that this did not extend constitutionally to state and local elections.
That decision left state and local electoral officials with a potentially nightmarish situation: Unless the voting age could be made uniform, there would have to be two separate voters’ rolls, one for federal and one for state and local elections. Moreover, the additional cost and time that would have to be invested would be prohibitive. These factors undercut most of the opposition to lowering the voting age to eighteen in all elections.
Therefore, when an amendment to the Constitution was proposed in Congress on March 23, 1971, to make the voting age of eighteen a uniform standard in every election, the states were willing to resolve their quandary, accepting what became the Twenty-sixth Amendment. It was passed by Congress and ratified by the states in record time—slightly more than three months.
Impact
The addition of a large block of younger voters certainly affected the strategies of both major political parties. The fears of conservatives, who had strongly opposed the change, proved unjustified: There was no sustained liberal trend during the rest of the decade or for years thereafter.
Bibliography
Keyssar, Alexander. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Peltason, J. W. Understanding the Constitution. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985.