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.

After World War II ended in 1945, the issue of lowering the minimum voting age received renewed attention when the United States entered the Korean War as part of the United Nations Forces defending the Republic of Korea from North Korea and China.1 In 1950, at the beginning of U.S. involvement in the Korean War, the Selective Service Act of 1948 established 19 as the age at which men were liable for military service.2 In 1951, Congress amended the law to lower the draft age to 18-and-a-half years old.3 At the time, most soldiers under the age of 21 could not vote in federal or state elections.4

The Korean War ended with the signing of an armistice in July 1953.5 In his January 1954 State of the Union Speech, President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed that “[f]or years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.” 6 Eisenhower recommended several measures to enhance access to the ballot, including “a constitutional amendment permitting citizens to vote when they reach the age of 18.” 7 Although many 1950s-era proponents of lowering the voting age continued to focus on the perceived unfairness of denying the franchise to young men in the Armed Forces, other supporters argued that young men and women had earned the right to vote by demonstrating sufficient knowledge, responsibility, and maturity.8

Soon after President Eisenhower delivered his State of the Union speech, Senator William Langer of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced a joint resolution that proposed a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18 in federal and state elections.9 The Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported the resolution, observing that men between the ages of 18 and 21 could be drafted for military service, and that President Eisenhower supported the measure.10 According to the committee, withholding the right to vote from young men and women until they became 21 “diminishe[d]” their “enthusiasm” for participating in the political process.11 The committee contended that the amendment would not infringe on states’ authority to set voter qualifications because its successful ratification required the approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures.12

Senator Langer’s joint resolution became the first proposed constitutional amendment that would have lowered the voting age to be debated on the floor of either house of Congress. However, the Senate narrowly failed to approve the joint resolution by the necessary two-thirds vote.13 During the 1950s, several states considered measures to lower their minimum voting ages below 21, and three states adopted them.14 Kentucky lowered its voting age to 18 when voters amended its constitution by referendum in 1955.15 In addition, Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the United States with voting ages of 19 and 20, respectively, in 1959.16

Footnotes

1

Korean War, Dwight D. Eisenhower Pres. Libr., Museum & Boyhood Home, >https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/korean-war.

2

Selective Service Act of 1948, Pub. L. No. 80-759, tit. I, §§ 3, 4(a), 62 Stat. 604–06.

3

Universal Military Training and Service Act Amendments of 1951, Pub. L. No. 82-51, tit. I, § 1(d), 65 Stat. 75–76. The 1951 amendments renamed the Selective Service Act of 1948.

4

See Sen. Birch Bayh, S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 92d Cong., Passage and Ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment: Report of Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee 3 (Comm. Print 1971). But see Ga. Const. of 1877, § 2-602 (adopted Aug. 3, 1943) ( “Every citizen of this State who is a citizen of the United States, eighteen years old or upwards, not laboring under any of the disabilities named in this Article, and possessing the qualifications provided by it, shall be an elector and entitled to register and vote at any election by the people.” ).

5

See Armistice Negotiations, U.N. Command, >https://www.unc.mil/History/1951-1953-Armistice-Negotiations/.

6

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union (Jan. 7, 1954), Am. Presidency Project, >https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-message-the-congress-the-state-the-union-13.

7

Id. In his 1955 State of the Union Speech, President Eisenhower called for a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age in federal elections but not state elections. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union (Jan. 6, 1955), Am. Presidency Project, >https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-message-the-congress-the-state-the-union-12.

8

See, e.g., 100 Cong. Rec. 6971 (1954) (statement of Sen. Dirksen); Jenny Diamond Cheng, Voting Rights for Millennials: Breathing New Life into the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, 67 Syracuse L. Rev. 653, 669 (2017).

9

S.J. Res. 53, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. (1953). The joint resolution’s operative language was nearly identical to the later-ratified Twenty-Sixth Amendment. See id.

10

S. Rep. No. 83-1075, at 1–2 (1954); see also S. Rep. No. 82-2036, at 1 (1952) (favorably reporting a similar joint resolution in the 82nd Congress, S.J. Res. 127, which was not debated on the floor).

11

S. Rep. No. 83-1075, at 2 (1954). The committee also observed that 18- to 20-year-old persons were permitted to “exercise” various “responsibilities commensurate with maturity” (e.g., marry) and noted the State of Georgia’s positive experience with youth voting. Id. at 2–3.

12

Id. at 2.

13

See 100 Cong. Rec. 6956–59, 6963–68, 6969–80 (1954) (recording a vote of 34-24). Thirty-seven Senators did not vote on the joint resolution. See id. at 6979–80.

14

Thomas H. Neale, Cong. Rsch. Serv., 83-103, The Eighteen Year Old Vote: The Twenty-Sixth Amendment and Subsequent Voting Rates for Newly Enfranchised Age Groups 6 (1983) (reporting that the “legislatures of no fewer than 35 States considered reducing the age requirement between 1950 and 1954” ).

15

See Bayh, supra note 4, at 3.

16

See id.