Twenty-Sixth Amendment

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.

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment prohibits the federal and state governments from denying or abridging, on the basis of age, the voting rights of U.S. citizens who are at least 18 years old.1 The Amendment effectively lowered the minimum voting age to 182 for all federal, state, and local elections.3 Section 2 of the Amendment grants Congress the power to enforce the prohibitions in Section 1 by enacting “appropriate legislation.” 4 The Supreme Court has not decided any cases definitively interpreting the Twenty-Sixth Amendment,5

, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the judgment of a three-judge district court, which had enjoined a Texas county voter registrar’s discriminatory use of a complex residency questionnaire for certain prospective student voters living on college campuses. The questionnaire required the students to demonstrate their intent to remain in the county after graduation in order to register to vote. The lower court held this to be a violation of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment as enforced under Title III of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, and the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment without a written opinion. , summarily aff’g ; see also (observing that a summary affirmance does not necessarily imply the Supreme Court’s endorsement of the lower court’s reasoning). but lower courts have occasionally confronted questions about the Amendment’s scope since its 1971 ratification.6

The Constitution originally deferred to each state’s determination of who could vote in federal and state elections and did not prohibit the states from restricting citizens’ eligibility to vote on the basis of age.7 Many Founding-era state constitutions, laws, and customs limited voting privileges to White men who were at least 21 years of age and owned a certain amount of property, among other qualifications.8 In the nation’s early years—and even well into the twentieth century—many Americans believed that a minimum voting age of 21 was necessary to ensure that voters would possess sufficient independence and “sound judgment.” 9 Although the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, appeared to recognize that all of the states had adopted 21 as the minimum voting age at the time,10 the issue of voter age qualifications did not receive significant nationwide attention until the United States entered World War II in the 1940s.11

Shortly after the United States entered the war, Congress lowered the minimum draft age to 18 through successive amendments to the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.12 These amendments prompted some public officials to question why 18- to 20-year-old men serving in the nation’s Armed Forces could not vote in federal or state elections.13 Alluding to this perceived contradiction, the slogan “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” became popular among proponents of lowering the voting age during the war.14

In the decades after World War II, public support for lowering the minimum voting age grew as Americans questioned why young soldiers fighting in Korea and Vietnam could not exercise the franchise.15 Additionally, many policymakers contended that 18- to 20-year-olds had earned the right to vote by demonstrating sufficient knowledge, responsibility, and maturity.16 In the midst of campus protests against the Vietnam War, some Members of Congress argued that conferring the franchise on young voters would allow them to express their views peacefully within the political process.17

When extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 1970, Congress included a provision lowering the age qualification to vote in all elections—federal, state, and local—to eighteen.18 In a divided decision in the 1970 case Oregon v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court held that Congress was empowered to lower the age qualification in federal elections, but voided its attempt to lower the minimum voting age in all other elections as beyond congressional power.19

. Confronted with the possibility that they might have to maintain two sets of registration books and incur the expense of running separate election systems for federal elections as compared to all other elections, many states were receptive to Congress proposing a constitutional amendment to establish a minimum age qualification of eighteen for all elections.20

On March 23, 1971, Congress approved the proposed Twenty-Sixth Amendment and submitted it to the states for potential ratification.21 The Amendment attained the three-fourths majority of the states necessary for ratification a few months later on July 1, 1971.22 On July 5, the Administrator of the General Services Administration officially certified that the Amendment had been ratified and become part of the Constitution.23

Footnotes

1

U.S. Const. amend. XXVI, § 1.

2

Prior to the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s ratification, Congress successfully lowered the minimum voting age to 18 in federal elections—but not state elections—by enacting the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970. See , and Oregon v. Mitchell. Some states maintained minimum voting ages below 21 before the Amendment became part of the Constitution. See

3

See U.S. Const. amend. XXVI, § 1. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s framers appear to have understood that the Amendment would lower the minimum voting age to 18—and prohibit age-based discrimination against adult citizen voters—in primary and general elections. See, e.g., H.R. Rep. No. 92-37, at 8 (1971). At least some of the Amendment’s framers contemplated that a state might lower its minimum voting age below 18 by exercising its power to set voter qualifications. See generally, e.g., U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 1; 117 Cong. Rec. 7535 (1971) (statement of Rep. Poff).

4

U.S. Const. amend. XXVI, § 2.

5

In

Symm v. United States

, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the judgment of a three-judge district court, which had enjoined a Texas county voter registrar’s discriminatory use of a complex residency questionnaire for certain prospective student voters living on college campuses. The questionnaire required the students to demonstrate their intent to remain in the county after graduation in order to register to vote. The lower court held this to be a violation of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment as enforced under Title III of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, and the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment without a written opinion.

439 U.S. 1105, 1105 (1979)

, summarily aff’g

United States v. Texas,

445 F. Supp. 1245, 1257–58, 1261 (S.D. Tex. 1978)

; see also

Anderson v. Celebrezze,

460 U.S. 780, 784 n.5 (1983)

(observing that a summary affirmance does not necessarily imply the Supreme Court’s endorsement of the lower court’s reasoning).

6

See (discussing lower court decisions addressing whether the Amendment protects young citizens’ participation in various aspects of the political process other than voting (e.g., running for public office); whether a state may make it easier for adult voters in a particular age group (e.g., adults over the age of 65) to vote without abridging the Twenty-Sixth Amendment rights of other age groups of adult voters; and the standard of review that applies to Twenty-Sixth Amendment claims).

7

See .

8

See id.

9

See id.

10

See id.; U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2 (providing that “when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.” ).

11

See .

12

See .

13

See id.

14

See id.

15

See ; and Oregon v. Mitchell.

16

See .

17

See .

18

See , and Oregon v. Mitchell. Congress sought to rely on its Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power as supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause to lower the voting age in state and local elections. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 18; U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 5; 116 Cong. Rec. 6649–51 (1970).

19

400 U.S. 112, 117–19 (1970)

.

20

See , and

Oregon v. Mitchell,

400 U.S. 112 (1970)

; H.R. Rep. No. 92-37, at 6–7 (1971) (observing that many states would have to amend their constitutions in order to lower their voting ages and that, in many cases, this could not be done before the next election).

21

See 117 Cong. Rec. 7570 (1971). The introductory text of the joint resolution proposing the Twenty-Sixth Amendment required three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify the Amendment within seven years of its submission to the states in order for it to become part of the Constitution. See Joint Resolution Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Extending the Right to Vote to Citizens Eighteen Years of Age or Older, S.J. Res. 7, 92nd Cong., 1st Sess., 85 Stat. 825, 825 (1971).

22

See .

23

Certification of Amendment to Constitution of the United States Extending the Right to Vote to Citizens Eighteen Years of Age or Older, 85 Stat. 829, 829–30 (1971). At the time of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s ratification, federal law authorized the Administrator of General Services to certify that the states had ratified an amendment to the Constitution. See Act of Oct. 31, 1951, ch. 655, § 2(b), 65 Stat. 710, 710. In 1985, the National Archivist assumed this role. See Pub. L. No. 98-497, tit. I, §§ 107(d), 301, 98 Stat. 2285, 2291, 2295 (1984) (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 106b).