Twenty - sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution - wikipedia Twenty - sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution This article is part of a series on the Constitution of the United States of America Preamble and Articles of the Constitution Preamble II III IV V VI VII Amendments to the Constitution Bill of Rights II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII Unratified Amendments Congressional Apportionment Titles of Nobility Corwin Child Labor Equal Rights D.C. Voting Rights History Drafting and ratification timeline Convention Signing Federalism Republicanism Full text of the Constitution and Amendments Preamble and Articles I -- VII Amendments I -- X Amendments XI -- XXVII Unratified Amendments United States portal U.S. Government portal Law portal Wikipedia book The Twenty - sixth Amendment ( Amendment XXVI ) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. The drive to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 grew across the country during the 1960s, driven in large part by the broader student activism movement protesting the Vietnam War. The impetus for drafting an amendment to lower the voting age arose following the Supreme Court 's decision in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 ( 1970 ), which held that Congress may establish a voting age for federal elections, but not for local or state elections. On March 23, 1971, a proposal to lower the voting age to 18 years was adopted by both houses of Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The amendment became part of the Constitution on July 1, 1971, three months and eight days after the amendment was submitted to the states for ratification, making this amendment the quickest to be ratified. Contents 1 Text 2 Background 2.1 Prior legislation 2.2 Oregon v. Mitchell 2.3 Opposition 3 Proposal and ratification 3.1 Passage by Congress 3.2 Ratification by the states 4 See also 5 References 6 External links 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. Background Prior legislation Senator Harley Kilgore began advocating for a lowered voting age in 1941 in the 77th Congress. 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 vote became a topic of interest at the local level. In 1943 and 1955 respectively, the Georgia and Kentucky legislatures passed measures to lower the voting age to 18. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1954 State of the Union address, became the first president to publicly state his support for prohibiting age - based denials of suffrage for those 18 and older. 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 eighteen. In 1963, the President 's Commission on Registration and Voting Participation, in its report to President Johnson, further encouraged considering lowering the voting age. 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. In 1970, Senator Ted Kennedy proposed amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the voting age nationally. 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. 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. Subsequently, Oregon and Texas challenged the law in court, and the case came before the Supreme Court in 1970 as Oregon v. Mitchell. By this time, four states had a minimum voting age below 21 : Georgia, Kentucky, Alaska and Hawaii. 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. In the 1966 decision of Katzenbach v. Morgan, the Supreme Court had ruled that `` if Congress acts 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 will let the law stand if the justices can ' perceive a basis ' for Congress 's actions ''. President Nixon disagreed with Kennedy. In a letter to the Speaker of the House and the House minority and majority leaders, he asserted that the issue is not whether the voting age should be lowered, but how ; in his own interpretation of the Katzenbach case, Nixon argued that to include age as something discriminatory would be too big of a stretch and voiced concerns that the damage of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the Voting Rights Act could be disastrous. 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. 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 20 years old could vote in federal elections. 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. Opponents to extending the vote to youths questioned the maturity and responsibility of people at the age of 18. 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. Carleton further criticized the move to lower the vote citing American preoccupations with youth in general, exaggerated reliance on higher education, and equating technological savvy with responsibility and intelligence. He denounced the military service argument as well, calling it a `` cliche ''. 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. James J. Kilpatrick, a political columnist, asserted that the states were `` extorted into ratifying the Twenty - sixth Amendment ''. 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 ). Proposal and ratification The Twenty - sixth Amendment in the National Archives Passage by Congress On March 10, 1971, the Senate voted 94 -- 0 in favor of proposing a Constitutional amendment to guarantee that the minimum voting age could not be higher than 18. On March 23, 1971, the House of Representatives voted 401 -- 19 in favor of the proposed amendment. Ratification by the States Having been passed by the 92nd United States Congress, the proposed Twenty - sixth Amendment was sent to the state legislatures for their consideration. Ratification was completed on July 1, 1971, after the amendment had been ratified by the following thirty - eight states : 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 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 200th birthday, 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. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states, bringing the total number of ratifying states to forty - three : 39. Oklahoma -- July 1, 1971 40. Virginia -- July 8, 1971 41. Wyoming -- July 8, 1971 42. Georgia -- October 4, 1971 43. South Dakota -- March 4, 2014 No action has been taken on the amendment by the states of Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, or Utah. See also Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ( 1870, extending vote to non-white men ) Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ( 1920, women 's right to vote ) References Jump up ^ United States Government Printing Office. `` Reduction of Voting Age : Twenty - Sixth Amendment '' ( PDF ). gpo.gov. ^ Jump up to : 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 ), 35. Jump up ^ 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 ), 36 - 37. Jump up ^ Dwight D. Eisenhower, `` Public Papers of the Presidents '' January 7, 1954, p. 22. Jump up ^ 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 ), 38. Jump up ^ 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 ), 56 - 64. Jump up ^ University of California, Santa Barbara. `` 196 - Statement on Signing the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970 ''. presidency.ucsb.edu. Jump up ^ Richard Nixon, `` Public Papers of the Presidents '' June 22, 1970, p. 512. Jump up ^ Educational Broadcasting Corporation ( 2006 ). `` Majority Rules : Oregon v. Mitchell ( 1970 ) ''. PBS. Jump up ^ 18 for Georgia and Kentucky, 19 for Alaska and 20 for Hawaii Jump up ^ Neale, Thomas H. The Eighteen Year Old Vote : The Twenty - Sixth Amendment and Subsequent Voting Rates of Newly Enfranchised Age Groups. 1983. ( PDF ) Jump up ^ Graham, Fred P., in Amendment XXVI Lowering the Voting Age, ed. Engdahl, Sylvia ( New York : Greenhaven Press, 2010 ), 67. Jump up ^ 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 ), 70 - 77. Jump up ^ Tokaji, Daniel P. ( 2006 ). `` Intent and Its Alternatives : Defending the New Voting Rights Act '' ( PDF ). Alabama Law Review. 58 : 353. Retrieved July 29, 2015. Jump up ^ Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 ( 1970 ), pp. 188 -- 121 Jump up ^ `` Making Civics Real : Workshop 2 : Essential Readings ''. learner.org. Retrieved 29 October 2015. Jump up ^ 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 ), 47. Jump up ^ 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 ), 48 - 49. Jump up ^ 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 ), 49. Jump up ^ 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 ), 50 - 51. Jump up ^ 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 ), 123 - 127. Jump up ^ 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 ), 128 - 130. Jump up ^ Senate, Journal of the Senate, 92nd Congress, 1st session, 1971. S.S.J. Res. 7 Jump up ^ House, Journal of the House, 92nd Congress, 1st session, 1971. H.S.J. Res. 7 ^ Jump up to : `` THE CONSTITUTION of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA : ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION, Centennial Edition, INTERIM EDITION : ANALYSIS OF CASES DECIDED BY THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES TO JUNE 26, 2013 '' ( PDF ). Washington, DC : U.S. Government Printing Office. 2013. p. 44. Retrieved April 13, 2014. Jump up ^ http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3068&st= &st1 = Richard Nixon : `` Remarks at a Ceremony Marking the Certification of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, '' July 5, 1971. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. Jump up ^ http://legis.sd.gov/Legislative_Session/Bills/Bill.aspx?Bill=SJR1&Session=2014 Senate Joint Resolution 1, South Dakota Legislature External links CRS Annotated Constitution : Twenty - sixth Amendment Eric Fish, The Twenty - sixth Amendment Enforcement Power United States Constitution Text ( via Wikisource ) Preamble and Articles I -- VII Amendments 1 -- 10 Amendments 11 -- 27 Unsuccessful Proposed Amendments Debates in State Conventions on the Adoption of the Constitution Preamble and articles Preamble II III IV V VI VII Amendments Ratified Bill of Rights 5 6 7 8 9 10 Others 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Pending Congressional Apportionment Titles of Nobility Corwin Amendment Child Labor Repealed Eighteenth Amendment Unsuccessful Equal Rights District of Columbia Voting Rights List of Amendments Bill of Rights ( Amendments 1 -- 10 ) Reconstruction Amendments ( Amendments 13 -- 15 ) Amendment proposals in Congress Convention to propose amendments State ratifying conventions Formation History Articles of Confederation Mount Vernon Conference Annapolis Convention Philadelphia Convention Virginia Plan New Jersey Plan Connecticut Compromise Three - 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at - large voting One man, one vote By group Women Youth Felons Foreigners Transgender people District of Columbia residents Puerto Rico residents Guam residents History Timeline Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era Selma to Montgomery marches Timeline of women 's suffrage Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 Silent Sentinels U.S. suffragists publications History of direct democracy Related Ballot access Campaign finance Citizenship Disfranchisement Election Election law Elections Electoral reform Electoral College Redistricting Secret ballot Suffrage Voting Voting system Voter registration National Voting Rights Museum Suffrage Basic topics Universal suffrage Women Black Youth Resident foreigners Expatriates in country of origin Voting age Demeny voting Suffragette Compulsory voting Disfranchisement Women 's liberation movement By country Australia 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act aboriginal women Japan Hong Kong Kuwait New Zealand Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom women Wales laws 1832 1918 1928 United States women Native Americans foreigners District of Columbia Puerto Rico amendments 15th 19th 26th 1965 Voting Rights Act Events International Woman Suffrage Alliance conferences 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th Black Friday 1 July marches 2014 protests US Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments Rochester Convention Ohio Women 's Convention National Women 's Rights Convention 1907 Mud March Suffrage Hikes 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession Silent Sentinels Night of Terror `` Give Us the Ballot '' Selma to Montgomery marches Related Age of candidacy US Voting Rights Museum Umbrella Movement Women Suffragists Timeline of women 's suffrage US in majority - 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Question: what did the twenty sixth amendment to the constitution change about voting
Answer: lower the voting age from 21 to 18