The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, in addition to being the penultimate amendment made to the Constitution to date, lowered the minimum voting age to eighteen years old.
History and Origin
The minimum age for suffrage had never been codified by federal law. The framers of the Constitution did not instill this metric, likely due to their emphasis on federalism and allowing the state to make their own decisions. As such, the states had their own authorities to set voting ages, with twenty-one years of age being adopted as the unofficial national standard.
Calls to lower the voting age to eighteen began in the 1940s, with Senator Harley Kilgore (D-WV) advocating for it in 1941 during the 77th Congress. Kilgore wasn’t in a room by himself, as fellow Senators, Representatives in the U.S. House, and even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt all agreed.
Although such a resolution never made it through the halls of Congress, it did spark interest and debate on the topic. Georgia became the first state to lower the voting age to eighteen in 1943, followed by Kentucky doing the same in 1955.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-KS) became the first president to publicly support the change, doing so in his 1954 State of the Union address.
However, the Vietnam War would become the primary point of debate on this issue, as many found it counterintuitive that the young men drafted into the war had no way of voting for the same politicians who would vote to send them there. Moreover, the young soldiers had no recourse at the ballot box upon their return.
The saying, “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote”, quickly became a commonplace sound bite, especially off the heels of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (D-NY) decision to lower the military draft age to eighteen during World War II. The slogan even has roots to that era, when Senator Kilgore and company had already begun advocating for the change.
President Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) also encouraged lowering the vote age, as evidenced by the 1963 report by the President’s Commission on Registration and Voting Participation. Johnson proposed the change on May 29, 1968, in the final months of his presidency.
Public support for the measure was also whipped by the involvement of young people in the social and political movements of the 1950s and 1960s, such as the Civil Rights Movement. The argument was that if young people were willing to participate in demonstrations for fundamental change, then they should be able to have a say in the system as well.
Opponents, however, argued that idealism among the youth and lack of “vested interests” should preclude those younger than twenty-one years from voting. Even so, these arguments would eventually be seen as supportive of the measure, as many viewed the political system at the time as in crisis. The logic was that a perpetually younger voting bloc in each election would bring balance to the government and public policy, especially in times of political consternation.
In 1970, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would propose an amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the national voting age to eighteen. President Richard Nixon (R-CA), despite his “misgivings about the constitutionality” of that provision, signed it into law and vowed to direct Attorney General John Mitchell (R-NY) “cooperate fully” in a “swift court test” to determine the constitutionality of the provision.
Nixon’s main point of contention wasn’t the lowering of the voting age itself, rather the method in which it could be legally applied.
Oregon V. Mitchell
Senator Kennedy argued that the Fourteenth Amendment allowed Congress to pass the legislation. In the Supreme Court case Katzenbach V. Morgan (1966), the Court ruled that if Congress acted to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment on a discrimination basis – that is, age discrimination – the Court would allow the law to stand if the justices could “perceive a basis” for the congressional action.
Nixon’s interpretation of Katzenbach feared that arguing on a basis of age discrimination would overextend the legal concept of discrimination. He feared that such a problem would lead to the Court’s overturning of the Voting Rights Act.
The case Oregon V. Mitchell (1970) would deliberate just that. The Supreme Court was deeply divided on this interpretation, striking down the provision that would establish eighteen years as the voting age in state and local elections, but upholding the provision lowering the age to eighteen years in federal elections. The decision required states to maintain two separate voting roles for the different categories.
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 power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Ratification
After Oregon V. Mitchell, Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN) surveyed election officials in forty-seven states, finding that the added registration and maintenance would cost about $20 million. He also found a case for immediate action to avoid “chaos and confusion” ahead of the 1972 presidential election, as the states would likely not have enough time to amend their own constitutions before then.
In March 1971, the Senate voted 94-0 in favor of a minimum voting age of eighteen years. Later that month, the House voted 401-19 in favor.
The Twenty-Sixth Amendment passed faster than any other amendment in U.S. history. On March 23, 1971, five states ratified: Minnesota, Delaware, Tennessee, Washington, and Connecticut – all within two hours of each other. A dispute remains as to which state was first to ratify. The Minnesota Legislature technically ratified first at 3:14p.m. EST (4:14p.m. CST). The U.S. Senate Parliamentarian ruled that while Minnesota acted prematurely, as the ratification hadn’t been sent to the states yet, the legality of its ratification was not overturned or officially challenged. Technically, Delaware was first to ratify under that interpretation.
Just three months after it was sent to the states, Ohio became the thirty-eighth state to ratify on June 30, 1971, making the Twenty-Sixth Amendment an addition to the U.S. Constitution. New York was thirty-first to ratify, doing so on June 2, 1971.
Four more states ratified after the threshold had been met. South Dakota did not ratify until March 4, 2014.
No action was ever taken by Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, or Utah.
Effects
Although the amendment passed faster than any other, it still faced significant opposition leading up to the ratification. After Nixon’s signing of the 1970 extension to the Voting Rights Act, seventeen states refused to pass measures to lower their minimum voting ages. Congressman Emanuel Celler (D-NY), who had served in Congress from 1923 to 1973, was one of the most vocal opponents of the idea during his tenure. As Chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee for much of his time in Washington, Celler questioned the “good judgement” of the youth’s low experience with citizenship. He also argued that whatever good qualities youth might have had as soldiers didn’t necessarily translate to good qualities in terms of citizenship.
Professor William G. Carleton argued that the period of adolescence had grown significantly at the time, appropriately dovetailed with the amendment’s passage. He argued that the youth at the time had far less responsibilities than their counterparts of generations past. He also argued the correlation/causation of technological savvy with higher responsibility and intelligence.
To this day, many continue to argue that the voting age should have never been lowered. In fact, some assert that it should be as high as twenty-five. Proponents argue that a heightened age correlates to heightened responsibilities, civic understanding, and more “vested interests” as workers, earners, and owners.
Still, many support the decision, especially as it relates to the minimum age for selective service. The youth vote is a particularly valuable voting bloc in federal elections, often having backed the Democratic presidential nominee for decades. In 2020, Joe Biden (D-DE won voters aged 18-29 by a whopping twenty-nine points. In 2024, they backed Kamala Harris (D-CA) by just four points.
Research suggests that the younger demographics are trending, or already are, much more Republican than they once were, albeit ethnic and educational faultlines still show a clear partisan division within the age demographic.
