The Youth Vote is Being Suppressed. The 26th Amendment is the Solution
The youth vote could decide the 2020 election, and yet it is being suppressed.
The hurdles for young voters are many. Residency requirements, strict voter ID laws and inaccessible polling places affect voters of all ages, but they particularly abridge youth voting rights. College students living and studying away from their family homes have to establish residency in their new locations to register to vote. Many states have prohibited the use of student ID cards for voter identification, requiring in-state drivers’ licenses. These and other policies burden the rights of young voters.
The havoc wrought by covid-19 on colleges and universities is only going to compound these difficulties.
This situation led to a challenge to a Texas policy that recently came before the Supreme Court. Under Texas law, only registered voters who meet certain criteria — including being 65 or older — are qualified to request a mail-in ballot. But the 26th Amendment states that the right to vote for citizens 18 and older cannot be denied or abridged because of age. “Whatever right to vote a state creates — whether it involves polling hours, early voting, or vote-by-mail — must be extended to all voters without regard to their race, their sex, their payment of a tax … or their age,” argued Texas Democrats in their lawsuit challenging the state’s law.
A trial judge issued an injunction requiring that the state permit all voters, regardless of age, to use mail-in ballots. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit stayed this injunction pending an appeal, and the Supreme Court declined to step in, despite Justice Sonia Sotomayor noting that it “raises weighty but seemingly novel questions regarding the Twenty-Sixth Amendment.”
Sotomayor is right. For most of its almost 50-year history, the 26th Amendment has been understood as giving 18- to 21-year-olds the right to vote. But like the 15th and 19th amendments, the 26th does more than merely extend the formal right to vote. It also prevents the state from imposing discriminatory burdens on voting rights. Sotomayor’s note serves as a timely reminder of the historical significance, contemporary relevance and untapped potential of this amendment.