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How The 26th Amendment Affected America's Youth

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How The 26th Amendment Affected America's Youth
The 26th Amendment: How it affected America 's youth Elections were changed forever when the youth received the right to vote from the passing of the new amendment to the Constitution. On July 1, 1971 the Twenty-sixth amendment was passed and children at the young age of eighteen were forever given the right to vote in elections. The twenty-sixth amendment affect youth in a positive way because it allowed their voices to be heard.

After President Franklin D. Roosevelt had lowered the minimum age for being drafted into the military to the young age of eighteen from twenty-one, many youth voting rights movements created a slogan that is now infamously known around the United States. “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” was heard
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senate unanimously voted on the passing of the twenty-sixth amendment and a few days later went to the fifty states for ratification. Two months later, the shortest amount of time it took any amendment to receive the three-fourths vote, the 26th amendment was ratified. President Nixon wrote notes where he expressed his opinion on the 26th amendment. During the Young Americans in Concert program on July 5, 1971, President Nixon read his speech in the East Room. In his speech, he had mentioned to the young adults gathered on that day, that “we need your spirit … courage …”5 He goes on to talk about how “our strength is for peace – freedom –”6

In 1970, the Voting Rights Act had set the minimum voting age at eighteen to federal and state elections but the “Supreme Court ruled that the Voting Rights Act applied only to federal elections, and that the power of Congress did not extend to other elections.”7 If this happened then the government would need to have two different registration books and election systems for federal and other type of elections. It would cost too much money.

Receptive to the proposal, all states had ratified the amendment by July 1, 1971 – more quickly than any previous amendment had been ratified – thus enabling approximately 11 million new voters to participate in the national elections in

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