Voting Rights and Draft of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment Has one ever questioned why eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote? The Twenty-Sixth Amendment was established in the year of 1971 due to the draft of eighteen-year-olds into the military who were still unable to vote. This amendment in the Constitution states that those who are eighteen years of age or older shall have the right to vote, and it will not be denied. At that time the age to vote was set at twenty-one. (“Twenty-Sixth Amendment”) The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to eighteen, has increased voter participation in the general population. Prior to the 1970’s, eighteen-year-old men were being drafted into World War II and had not been given the right to …show more content…
Benson and Morley wrote that the court case in 1970, Oregon v. Mitchell, gave the authority to lower the age to vote in federal elections, but did not have the power to lower the age for state and local elections. According to research, Georgia was the first state to lower their voting age from twenty-one to eighteen for state and local elections in 1943. (“The 26th Amendment”) According to Ann Coulter, ObamaCare showed that young people were not adults until they reached the age of twenty-six because most eighteen-year-olds were still in the home of their parents and some did not even have a job, which led to the new motto: “Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to …show more content…
Though not all do. As a result of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment ratification, the growth of the voting population grew by five million voters or more after the enactment of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. In 1972, a year after the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, Nixon declared that there were eleven million new voters after the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment and the registered voting population was sixty-nine percent. When eighteen-year-olds were eligible to vote, it helped the number of voters in the United States to be increased. Based on research, in 2008, voters aged eighteen through twenty-four were the only group to show an increase. This election was the second highest percentage of voters in history. The number of voters in 2016 was fifty-eight percent; approximately twenty-four million voters in this election were young people. (“The 26th