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 original Constitution, which took effect in 1789, deferred to each state’s determination of who could vote in federal and state elections1 and did not prohibit the states from restricting citizens’ eligibility to vote on the basis of age.2 Consistent with British legal tradition,3 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.4 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.” 5

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.6 In an effort to prevent southern states from interfering with African American men’s citizenship rights, Section 2 of the Amendment penalized states that restricted the voting rights of male inhabitants who were citizens of at least 21 years of age by reducing the states’ representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College.7 However, the issue of voter age qualifications did not receive significant nationwide attention until the United States entered World War II in the 1940s.8

Footnotes

1

See U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 1 ( “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” ); . The Voter Qualifications Clause refers only to elections to the House of Representatives because state legislatures originally selected Senators. Adopted in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment has identical voter qualification requirements for Senate elections. See U.S. Const. amend. XVII cl. 1. See also U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2 ( “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors [for President] . . . ” ).

2

See sources cited supra 1. The subsequently ratified Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments limit the states in the setting of qualifications in terms of race, sex, payment of poll taxes, and age. In addition, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause has also excluded certain qualifications in regard to all elections. .

3

At the time of the Constitution’s drafting, British legal tradition, which was derived in significant part from English statutes and common law, had established 21 as the age of legal majority for voting purposes. Parliamentary Elections Act 1695, 7 & 8 Will. 3, c. 25, § 7 (Eng.) (1696) ( “And bee itt further enacted That noe Person whatsoever being under the Age of One and twenty Yeares shall att any tyme hereafter bee admitted to give his Voice for Election of any Member or Members to serve in this present or any future Parliament.” ); Corinne T. Field, If You Have the Right to Vote at 21 Years, Then I Have Age and Equal Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century United States, in Age in America: the Colonial Era to the Present 74 (2015) ( “In English common law, twenty-one had long been recognized as the age of legal majority, the moment when an individual was freed from guardianship and granted the legal standing of an adult in all matters regarding person and property.” ). The American colonies and early states made only a few brief exceptions to the British rule. See, e.g., F.M. Brewer, The Voting Age, CQ Press (Sept. 9, 1944), https://cqpress.sagepub.com/cqresearcher/report/download/voting-age-cqresrre1944090900 (observing that certain males between the ages of 16 and 20 who served in a state militia in New England were allowed to elect their officers); Field, supra, at 75 (describing Pennsylvania’s brief grant of the right to vote in general elections to teenage White males in 1776).

4

See, e.g., Ga. Const. of 1777, art. IX ( “All male white inhabitants, of the age of twenty-one years, and possessed in his own right of ten pounds value, and liable to pay tax in this State, or being of any mechanic trade, and shall have been resident six months in this State, shall have a right to vote at all elections for representatives, or any other officers, herein agreed to be chosen by the people at large; and every person having a right to vote at any election shall vote by ballot personally.” ); Md. Const. of 1776, The Constitution, or Form of Government, cl. II ( “That the House of Delegates shall be chosen in the following manner: All freemen, above twenty-one years of age, having a freehold of fifty acres of land, in the county in which they offer to vote, and residing therein—and all freemen, having property in this State above the value of thirty pounds current money, and having resided in the county, in which they offer to vote, one whole year next preceding the election, shall have a right of suffrage, in the election of Delegates for such county.” ); Pa. Const. of 1776, Plan or Frame of Government for the Commonwealth or State of Pennsylvania, § 6 ( “Every freemen of the full age of twenty-one Years, having resided in this state for the space of one whole Year next before the day of election for representatives, and paid public taxes during that time, shall enjoy the right of an elector.” ); sources cited supra note 26.

5

See, e.g., 2 The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 203 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) [hereinafter Farrand’s Records] (Madison’s notes, Aug. 7, 1787) (statement of Gouverneur Morris) ( “The man who does not give his vote freely is not represented. It is the man who dictates the vote. Children do not vote. Why? Because they want prudence. Because they have no will of their own. The ignorant and the dependent can be as little trusted with the public interest.” ); 3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 578 (1833) (observing that “infants” and “minors . . . have been, without scruple, denied the right [to vote] as not having the sound judgment and discretion fit for its exercise” ); see also 117 Cong. Rec. 7546 (1971) (statement of Rep. Schmitz) ( “Maturity comes from getting out in the world and cutting one’s own path.” ); 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 165–66 (Chicago 1979) (1765) ( “[A]ll popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications; whereby some, who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting, in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.” ).

6

See U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2. The American colonies and early states had made only a few brief exceptions to the British legal tradition, which had established 21 as the age of legal majority for voting purposes. See sources cited supra note 26. In 1943, Georgia became the first state since the Founding Era to lower its minimum voting age below 21. See Ga. Const. of 1877, § 2-602 (adopted Aug. 3, 1943).

7

See U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2. The provision, which was never successfully used, contains an exception allowing restrictions on voting rights for “participation in rebellion, or other crime.” .

8

At New York’s 1867 Constitutional Convention, some delegates proposed amending the state’s charter to grant voting rights to men between the ages of 18 and 20. However, the proposal was not adopted. See Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention Held in 1867 and 1868 in the City of Albany 489–91, 540–42 (Edward F. Underhill ed., 1868) (July 24–25, 1867) (amendments offered by Delegate Marcus Bickford).