First, Congress could reasonably find that the reduction of the voting age to 18 is necessary in order to eliminate a very real discrimination that exists against the nation's youth in the public services they receive. To me, this is the most important single principle we can pursue as a nation if we are to succeed in bringing our youth into full and lasting participation in our institutions of democratic government. In July 1971, President Richard M. Nixon signed it into law. Everything he sings gives me goose bumps, but two of his best songs that are just totally awesome are "No More Night" and "Moonlight … They deserve the right to vote and the stake in society it represents. The section provides, in effect, that any person who had completed the sixth grade in a Puerto Rican school could not be denied the right to vote in a Federal, State or local election because of his inability to pass a literacy test in English. I am hopeful, therefore, that we can achieve broad and bipartisan agreement on the statutory route to reach our vital goal of enlarging the franchise to include 18 year-olds. All of these arguments turned out to be false, but they’d be objectionable even if they were true. But, this position is not yet the law, even though the Supreme Court's decision last June in Gaston County v. United States points in that direction. None of us who has visited a high school or college in recent years can fail to be impressed by their knowledge and dedication. Most of the time, this is where their parents live. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. It happens within marriages, too. Not at all. Surely, the constitutional power of Congress to override State voting qualifications is as great in the case of age requirements as in the case of literacy requirements or residence requirements. Each right or responsibility in our society presents unique questions dependent on the particular issue at stake. As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term unemployment is such a national catastrophe: It’s … In the course of the recent hearings I conducted on the draft, I was deeply impressed by the conviction and insight that our young citizens demonstrated in their constructive criticism of our present draft laws. The United States is not alone in requiring citizens to be 18 to cast a vote. Top Ten Greatest Male Tenors The Top Ten. The question was squarely raised in the Hall case, but the Court declined to decide it. So while I’d be happy about the voting age being lowered to 16 as Yang proposes, and such a plan is far more realistic than mine, it still falls short of our obligations to our fellow citizens. There are a host of good reasons to give children the vote. The majority of the Court disposed of the case on a procedural ground, without ruling on the constitutionally of the residence requirement. Voting should not be a final responsibility you earn only once you’ve taken on all of the other responsibilities of society; it should be one of the first core rights you exercise as a member of society. And, in Kramer v. Union School District in 1969, the court held that a State-could not withhold the franchise from residents in school district elections merely because they owned no property or had no children attending the district schools. It did not go well. Indeed, in many cases, 18 to 21 year-olds already possess a better education than a large proportion of adults among our general electorate. By securing the right to vote, we help to insure, in the historic words of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, that our government "may be a government of laws, and not of men." Left to state initiative, therefore, the result is likely at best to be an uneven pattern of unjustifiable variation. Well, let’s do them one better: The United States should consider eradicating the voting age entirely and letting every American citizen who can successfully fill out a ballot be counted in our local, state, and national elections (and yes, this goes for felons too). Someone who wanted to argue that the 26th Amendment strengthened our society might point out that there hasn’t been a wartime draft since, and that the socially liberal values younger people are more likely to hold have won some definitive cultural victories since then. So, even when teens don't turn 18 until December, they can register to vote any time during the calendar year. As the accompanying table indicates, enfranchisement of 18 year-olds would add approximately ten million persons to the voting age population in the United States. This story is part of a group of stories called. The Morgan decision is thus a sound precedent for Congress to act by statute to eliminate this inequity in all elections -- Federal, State and local. It is the cornerstone of all our other basic rights. Second, I think voting would be an exciting and meaningful exercise even for children too young to fill out their ballot validly, and it’s a great chance to develop the habit early — just like we have young children brush their teeth even though they’ll lose those teeth in a few years anyway.

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