The Twenty-sixth Amendment

On July 1, 1971, we ratified the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which lowered the legal voting age for American citizens to eighteen years old. Previously, under the 14th Amendment, the minimum voting age was 21 – and also only available to men.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment states:

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.

For decades, Americans were largely satisfied with the voting age established by the 14th Amendment in 1868 – but that all changed in the 1940s when the draft age was lowered from 21 to 18 for World War II. Many believed the draft age should match the voting age, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote in 1943: “If young men of eighteen and nineteen are old enough to be trained to fight their country's battles and to proceed from training to the battlefields, I think we must accept the fact that they are also old enough to know why we fight this war. If that is so, then they are old enough to take part in the political life of their country and to be full citizens with voting powers.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower later offered his support for the change in his 1954 State of the Union address: “For 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. I urge Congress to propose to the States a constitutional amendment permitting citizens to vote when they reach the age of 18.” 

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to endorse the change, publicly supporting the lower voting age in his 1954 State of the Union address.

Discussions over voting age went quiet for several years until widespread opposition to the Vietnam War reignited the debate, leading to the famous protest slogan: “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.”