Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The 26th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Amendment XXVI is, :
Wording
Section 1
English
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.
German
The right of citizens of the United States who are 18 years or older, must be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2
English
The Congress Shall have power to enforce this article by Appropriate legislation.
German
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Meaning and History
This Amendment to the Constitution granted the right to vote to all citizens who are 18 years or older.
This addition was proposed to Congress in 1941 by Mr Jennings Randolph from the state of West Virginia. Randolph argued that the citizens who were old enough to fight for the country and to die, even should get the right to vote. He left the Congress in 1947 and was recorded in 1959 in the Senate, where he proposed the addition in each session.
The right to vote for persons over 18 years has been requested by the President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson. In the 1960s, a law was passed which was comparable to the proposed addition. The Government of Oregon fought this but in court (Oregon v. Mitchell), and the Supreme Court overturned the parts of the law, which forced the states to registration of citizens over 18 years for state elections. At this time, five states had already granted its citizens under the age of 21 the right to vote: Georgia and Kentucky 18 years considered as a possible minimum age for elections, Alaska 19 years, Hawaii and New Hampshire 20 years. Many citizens wanted such action by all States.
The Congress and the legislatures of the individual states felt an increasing pressure to adopt the Amendment, as were obliged many young men to fight for their country and to die in the Vietnam War, however, had no right to vote. With this knowledge, President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 asked Congress for the introduction of the additive. The constitutional amendment finally passed the Congress, when he was again introduced in 1971 by Randolph. Within a few months he was three -quarters of the states ratified, faster than any other Amendment. On 1 July 1971, the 26th Amendment was formally certified by President Richard Nixon.
A casually intended consequence of this constitutional amendment was that many States by its citizens and other adults rights granted already with the age of 18 years, such as marriage and contract without parental consent. At the end of the 1980s, all states had implemented this (Mississippi was the last ). Only a right followed an opposite trend. The sale of alcohol is consistently permitted only to persons over 21 years since 1989. As late as the 1970s about half of all states had drawn the reduction to a minimum age of 18 years usually considered. This age was, however, lifted after statistics had shown that drivers 18 to 20 years tended more often to drunk to drive.