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Jennings Randolph from West Virginia introduced federal legislation to lower the voting age from 21 to 18
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Georgia was the first state to lower its voting age in state and lower elections from 21 to 18.
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traditionally the voting age was 21 though in the 1950s President Dwight Eisenhower signaled his support for lowering it.
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In Eisenhower's speech for the presidency in 1954, he said that "For years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. they should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons."
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Richard Nixon signed an extension of the voting rights act in 1965 which lowered the age eligibility to vote in all federal and state elections to 18.
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At least 60 resolutions were brought to congress for the voting age to no avail.
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in the late 1960s with the united states embroiled in a long costly war in Vietnam, the united states government drafted 18-year-olds into the war but they couldn't vote.
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the supreme court said, "18 and 21-year-olds can vote vice president and president but nothing else."
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on July 5, 1971. At a White House ceremony attended by 500 newly eligible voters, Nixon declared “The reason I believe that your generation, the 11 million new voters, will do so much for America at home is that you will infuse into this nation some idealism, some courage, some stamina, some high moral purpose, that this country always needs.”
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Passed by Congress March 23, 1971, and ratified July 1, 1971, the 26th amendment granted the right to vote to American citizens aged eighteen or older.
