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President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the drafting age to 18 years old. This change was made when the United States entered World War II. This also brought the first topic for changing the age to vote as well with the slogan: "Old enough to fight, Old enough to vote!"
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Lowering the voting age was brought up to attention to the Legislation by a congressman from West Virginia, Jenning Randolh. This was the first out of 11 times that he would bring up the voting age.
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Georgia was the first ever state to lower it's minimum voting age to 18 at the state and local level.
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President Eisenhower became the first president to publicly support prohibiting age-based denials of suffrage for those 18 and older. He announced his support in his 1954 State of the Union address.
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When the Vietnam War draft took place, it reopened people's eyes with the fact that they could fight by still couldn't vote.
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Congress made the provision that the voting age would be lowered to 18. Nixon then believed that it was unconstitutional but he continued to sign it. He didn't think that congress should use this and that it should be an amendment to the constitution.
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The Senate voted 94-0 in favor of proposing a Constitutional amendment to guarantee that the minimum voting age could not be higher than 18.
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The House of Representatives passed the 26th amendment and it went to the states for final ratification. The vote was 401 to 19 in favor of the 26th Amendment.
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On July 1, North Carolina became the 38th state to ratify the Amendment. It was the shortest period of time for any amendment in US history to be ratified, this was just four months total.
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55% of voters age 18-24 turned out for the 1972 election.Voter turnout steadily dropped after that. It went down to 36% in the 1988 election.Voter turnout rose to 49% in the 2008 election, the second highest percentage in US history.
