Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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The Twenty sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) of the United States Constitution, ratified on July 1, 1971, standardized the voting age to 18. It was passed in response to the Vietnam War and to partially overrule the Supreme Court's decision in Oregon v. Mitchell.
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[edit] 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 the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. |
” |
[edit] Background
Suffrage to those 18 and older was endorsed by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. A law was passed in 1970 which was similar to this Amendment, but the States of Oregon and Texas challenged it in court, and the Supreme Court declared in Oregon v. Mitchell the parts of the law that required states to register 18-year-olds for state elections to be unconstitutional. By this time, five states had already granted some 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).
The 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. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting age that traced its roots back to World War II, when President Franklin Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to eighteen. The idea was that people who were old enough to be drafted into the military should have a say in the selection of the civilian government that determines when and how military force is used. Although multiple Presidents had called upon Congress to pass a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age, no attempt gained even modest success until after the decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, when forty-seven states were forced to either align their state voting ages with the new federal requirement or pay enormous sums of taxpayer money and risk Election Day confusion in 1972 with age-segregated balloting. The amendment passed through the Congress when it was reintroduced by Senator Jennings Randolph in 1971, and within months passed three-fourths of the state legislatures, faster than any other amendment. The Twenty sixth Amendment was formally certified by the Administrator of General Services on July 7, 1971.[1]
[edit] Consequences
A semi-intended consequence of the Twenty sixth 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, many states do retain higher age limits for other rights. For example, Alabama, Utah, New Jersey and Alaska's minimum age for tobacco use is 19; and Nevada as well as other states have a limit of 21 years for gambling. Notably, the Congress has also effected a similar change in states' age limits in the other direction. For example, after many states 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.[2]
[edit] Proposal and ratification
Congress proposed the Twenty sixth Amendment on March 23, 1971.[3] The following states ratified the amendment:
- Connecticut (March 23, 1971)
- Delaware (March 23, 1971)
- Minnesota (March 23, 1971)
- Tennessee (March 23, 1971)
- Washington (March 23, 1971)
- Hawaii (March 24, 1971)
- Massachusetts (March 24, 1971)
- Montana (March 29, 1971)
- Arkansas (March 30, 1971)
- Idaho (March 30, 1971)
- Iowa (March 30, 1971)
- Nebraska (April 2, 1971)
- New Jersey (April 3, 1971)
- Kansas (April 7, 1971)
- Michigan (April 7, 1971)
- Alaska (April 8, 1971)
- Maryland (April 8, 1971)
- Indiana (April 8, 1971)
- Maine (April 9, 1971)
- Vermont (April 16, 1971)
- Louisiana (April 17, 1971)
- California (April 19, 1971)
- Colorado (April 27, 1971)
- Pennsylvania (April 27, 1971)
- Texas (April 27, 1971)
- South Carolina (April 28, 1971)
- West Virginia (April 28, 1971)
- New Hampshire (May 13, 1971)
- Arizona (May 14, 1971)
- Rhode Island (May 27, 1971)
- New York (June 2, 1971)
- Oregon (June 4, 1971)
- Missouri (June 14, 1971)
- Wisconsin (June 22, 1971)
- Illinois (June 29, 1971)
- Alabama (June 30, 1971)
- Ohio (June 30, 1971)
- North Carolina (July 1, 1971)
- Oklahoma (July 1, 1971)
Ratification was completed on July 1, 1971. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:
[edit] References
- ^ National Historic Site
- ^ South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987)
- ^ Mount, Steve (Jan 2007). Ratification of Constitutional Amendments. Retrieved on Feb 24, 2007.
[edit] External links
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