18-Year-Olds Finally Get the Right to Vote
President Richard Nixon on this day signed the Twenty-sixth Amendment, granting 18–20-year-olds the right to vote.
Eighteen year-olds had previously been granted the right to vote by Congress in 1970 in an amendment to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court, on December 21, 1970, however, declared the amendment an unconstitutional intrusion on the right of states to set their own voting requirements.
The Twentieth-Sixth Amendment was the fastest amendment ever ratified. Congress passed the amendment and sent it to the states on the 23rd of March 1971. It was ratified by 38 states by July 1st, which made it officially a part of the Constitution. (The presidential signing of a new amendment is a separate part of the procedure.)
The 26th 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 the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Read about the struggle for voting rights: Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (2015)
Learn more: Alexander Keyssar: The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in America (2000)