Amendment XXVI

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 power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified July 1, 1971.

From Nate:

"If you can die for your country in the military, you should be able to vote" – for the politicians who send young Americans into harms way.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation ...

One thing that Congress does not do is set standards for voter registration or for voting machines. And, Congress does not fund these enterprises. Currently, each state and local jurisdictions perform these functions.

A disaster arose in Florida in the presidential election of 2000. The election was so close, and punch card ballots were not counted if the counting machines could not determine whether a voter selected a candidate. If the punch wasn't completely empty, the counting machine did not recognize the vote. This came to be called "hanging chads " by the industry which manufactured these machines.

Congress had no say in the matter. Voting has been under the supervision of the state legislature and had enacted a rule for an automatic recount. However, the recount had a deadline if Florida was going to be able submit its votes for the Electoral Collage without negative consequences.

The Florida Supreme Court weighed in – with dubious state constitutional authority.

Two cases were submitted to the Unites States Supreme Court addressing different issues.

Finally, two hours before the Electoral College deadline, the Supreme Court ruled that the original ruling by Florida's Secretary of State that George W. Bush had won the popular vote. Candidate Al (Albert) Gore, Jr., conceded the next day.

The Supreme Court majority (5 to 4) ruled based on the spirit of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; ... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Some constitutional scholars believe that the federal Supreme Court made the right decision but based on the wrong grounds. A lot has been written about the subject, but something similar could happen again (see ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT, Bush v. Gore, Case (00-949), [December 12, 2000], Cornell University Law School Supreme Court Collection, February 1, 2006, accessed December 7, 2009).