What is the 26th Amendment?

The 26th Amendment reads: '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.' The amendment sets a national floor of 18 for the right to vote in all federal, state, and local elections. States may not raise the voting age above 18, though a state legislature could in theory lower it below 18 for its own elections -- a handful of localities allow 16- or 17-year-olds to vote in municipal elections, but 18 is the minimum for all federal elections.

The push for the 26th Amendment came directly from the Vietnam War. By the late 1960s, the contradiction was politically acute: the military draft applied to men starting at age 18, and hundreds of thousands of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds had fought in Vietnam -- many died there -- without having the right to vote for the officials who sent them. Congress first addressed this by statute rather than amendment: the Voting Rights Act of 1970 lowered the voting age to 18 for all elections, federal and state. But the Supreme Court struck down the state-election provision in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), ruling 5-4 that Congress could set the voting age for federal elections but not for state and local elections. That decision would have required states to maintain two separate voter rolls -- one for federal elections at 18, one for state elections at 21 -- an administratively unworkable result. The constitutional amendment route solved the problem by applying age-18 voting rights uniformly across all elections.

The 26th Amendment moved faster than any other amendment in U.S. history. Congress proposed it on March 23, 1971. The required 38 states ratified it in 100 days, with Ohio providing the final ratification on July 1, 1971 -- the fastest from proposal to ratification of any of the 27 amendments. President Nixon certified its adoption on July 5, 1971. For the 1972 presidential election, roughly 11 million new voters ages 18 to 20 became eligible for the first time. Richard Nixon won re-election in 1972 in a 49-state landslide, and the cohort of newly eligible young voters split roughly evenly, with slightly more supporting Democratic nominee George McGovern.

For the 2028 presidential election, the 26th Amendment means that any U.S. citizen who will be at least 18 years old on or before Election Day, November 7, 2028, is constitutionally entitled to vote -- provided they meet their state's registration requirements. Each state sets its own registration deadline, early-voting rules, and ID requirements, but no state may set the voting age above 18 for a federal election. Citizens who turn 18 between the registration deadline and Election Day may still be eligible in some states under pre-registration programs. Check your state's official election office or vote.gov for the exact rules in your state.