Talk:Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution

	Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of WikiProject U.S. Congress, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to the United States Congress.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. The options are: "FA", "A", "GA", "B", "C", "Start", "Stub", "List", "Disambiguation", "Template", or "Category."
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. The options are: "Top", "High", "Mid", and "Low."
???	This article has not yet been assigned a subject. The options are: "Person", "People", "Place", "Thing", and "Event."

[edit] Before

The previous vote age was 21, or? This should be explicated in the article. --Shallot 00:01, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There was no previous age of suffrage. States used various different ages, and at the time the 26th Amendment was ratified, there were even different voting ages in 47 states for federal elections than there were state elections. Suffragiologist (talk) 07:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

But was it mostly 21? Or 19? Was it 18 anywhere? The article doesn't make it clear what the status quo was before the amendment. 24.78.40.191 (talk) 15:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Technicality

The amendment does not actually grant suffrage to those eighteen years of age and older. It merely states that such people cannot be prohibited from voting on account of age.

If, for example, a state wanted to require that a person own land to vote, that would be constitutional. A non-landowning 18 year old could not cite the 26th amendment as having granted him suffrage. -- 69.19.2.36 20:50, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

71.248.225.51 19:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct. That is not a technicality; it just isn't within the scope of the amendment. One technicality may be that only states and the federal government can't prevent people under age 21 from voting on account of age; it says nothing about cities and counties, but I think it applies to them too since they're below the states. However, territories, since they're under the jurisdiction of the federal government, can't set their voting age above 18. SteveSims (talk) 10:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

You can make the same point about the 15th or 19th Amendments as well, and it's accurate. Felons and the mentally ill are routinely disenfranchised in the US regardless of their age, race or gender. Another related technicality would be that the 26th Amendment, in merely denying states' ability to discriminate on the basis of age for those 18 and over, does not set a voting age at 18 but rather establishes 18 as the maximum age a state can constitutionally establish their voting age. A state could technically set its voting age lower than 18. Suffragiologist (talk) 07:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Georgia ratification year

I found a website - http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am26.html - which says that Georgia ratified this in 1971, not 1972. Is there some other place that can prove this one way or another? tess (talk) 00:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Found another site - http://www.nps.gov/archive/malu/documents/amend26.htm - that says its Oct 4, 1971. I'm changing it here. tess (talk) 22:36, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jim Beatty and petition drive

I can't find info that says Jim Beatty was a U.S. congressman. Where does this info come from? --tessc (talk) 01:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Jim Beatty ran for a seat in the House of Representatives, but lost.[1] I have removed the reference to him being a "congressman". I have kept the "dubious" tag in place, because the reference to Jim Beatty is unsourced. --SMP0328. (talk) 19:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Is he even this Jim Beatty that's linked here? --tessc (talk) 19:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. That's why I kept the "dubious" tag in place. Since it's unsourced, I don't even know if that petition drive took place. --SMP0328. (talk) 19:39, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I feel it has been long enough, I'll remove that information. NuclearWarfare (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Section removed

[edit] Contemporary views

I have removed the Contemporary views section. It consisted of the following:

Since its ratification in 1971, there has been varied opposition to the amendment, even from conservatives who originally supported it.^{[citation needed]} For example, Republican Representative Christopher Shays (CT-4) said "We made a mistake lowering the voting age to 18" and asserts that it was lowered "out of guilt."^[1]

The first sentence had no sourcing (see cite tag) and the second sentence, although sourced, doesn't help prove that Representative Shays's view is "contemporary". For these reasons, I removed the Contemporary views section. SMP0328. (talk) 21:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Rep. Shays took office 16 years after the 26th Amendment was fully ratified. This is political job and ignores the fact that many Republicans were early advocates of a lower voting age (President Eisenhower?). Few politicians have publicly opposed the amendment. Suffragiologist (talk) 07:49, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Consequences

I removed the Consequences section. It said:

A semi-intended consequence of the Twenty sixth Amendment was that after its passage, one state after another then lowered the minimum age for exercising most other adult rights, such as marrying and signing contracts without parental consent, to 18 as well (Mississippi being the last). By the end of the 1980s all fifty states had done so. However, many states do retain higher age limits for other rights. For example, Alabama, Utah, New Jersey and Alaska's minimum age for tobacco use is 19; and Nevada as well as other states have a limit of 21 years for gambling. Notably, the Congress has also effected a similar change in states' age limits in the other direction. For example, after many states lowered their drinking ages in the 1970s, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 obliged states to set a limit of 21 years for the purchase of alcohol under threat of losing 10% of federal highway construction money.^[1]

That is clearly original research. Nothing in the section explained why any of the cited laws were a result of the Twenty sixth Amendment. These laws might have been passed even without the Amendment. SMP0328. (talk) 23:28, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oregon, Texas

Why did Oregon and Texas ratify the amendment, after they had fought the similar law in court? This seems very strange. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Here are two possibilities: (1) Those states defended themselves against a federal mandate, but the amendment needed the consent of the states; (2) The people of those states strongly supported the amendment. Obviously, both could be true. --SMP0328. (talk) 18:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The decision to litigate the issue is made by the governor and attorney general of the state, and here the decision was to support the state law (routinely done); the ratification of the amendment is made by the legislature (see Article Five of the United States Constitution). Also, years may have passed between the state law and the ratification. Ecphora (talk) 11:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)