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.
Amendment 26, passed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and ratified on July 1, 1971, changed the legal age of voters from twenty-one to eighteen:
In his 1954 State of Union address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to publicly support lowering the legal age of voters to eighteen. It had previously been set at twenty-one years of age, as per Amendment 14. Because of the Vietnam War, in which young men of ineligible voting age were conscripted to fight, the public pressured Congress to amend the constitutional age of voting:
Congress and the state legislatures felt increasing pressure to pass the constitutional amendment because of the Vietnam War, in which many young men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to eighteen.On March 10, 1971, the Senate voted 94-0 in favor of proposing a constitutional amendment to guarantee that the voting age could not be higher than 18. On March 23, 1971, the House of Representatives voted 401-19 in favor of the proposed amendment. Within four months after the Congress submitted it to the states, the amendment was ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, the shortest time in which any proposed amendment has received the number of ratifications needed for adoption.1
The reason President Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to eighteen and began drafting eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds was because the nation was running low on twenty-one-year-old cannon fodder for that generation's war. Consequently, in 1971, the reason for the change in the voting age was not so much to grant eighteen- to twenty-year-olds the privilege of voting, but rather to eliminate public opposition against eighteen- to twenty-year-olds being drafted.
Congress had two opportunities to get the age of manhood correct. In both instances (Amendment 14 and Amendment 26), they failed. Neither eighteen nor twenty-one is the biblical age of manhood. Yahweh set the age of military service (and thus manhood) at twenty years:
Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel.... (Numbers 1:2-3)2
In both instances, Congress completely ignored Yahweh’s will. Why should they should they consult Him when nothing in the Constitution requires them to? See Chapter 23, "Amendment 14: First-Birth vs. Second-Birth Citizenship," for more regarding the biblical age of conscription.
Numbers 14 describes anyone less than the age of twenty as children:
How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me?... Say unto them, ... Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me.... But your little ones [everyone less than twenty years of age], which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. (Numbers 14:27-33)
Isaiah 3 describes children, and women, ruling the nation as one of the curses for violating Yahweh's laws:
For, behold, the Lord, YHWH3 of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the ... mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes [mere lads their princes and capricious children, NASB] shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.... As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. (Isaiah 3:1-5, 12)
According to Numbers 14, eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds are still considered children. Along with the constitutional right to vote comes the right to be elected to public office. Consequently, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment empowered children to rule over adults, a curse upon the nation.
Even without eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds being elected, their constitutional privilege to vote can itself prove to be a curse. Case in point: along with the women's voting bloc,4 the majority of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who participated in the 2008 presidential election voted for Barack Obama.
Even if the biblical age requirement had not been breached, elections are themselves unbiblical. Consequently, the age stipulation found in Amendment 26 is extraneous. See Chapter 5 "Article 2: Executive Usurpation" for more regarding the unbiblical nature of elections.
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1. "Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution," Wikipedia, 2. All Scripture is quoted from the King James Version, unless otherwise noted. Portions of Scripture have been omitted for brevity. If you have questions regarding any passage, please open your Bible and study the text to ensure it has been properly used.
3. Where the Tetragrammaton YHWH - the four Hebrew characters that represent the personal name of God - has been unlawfully rendered the LORD or GOD in English translations, I have taken the liberty of correcting this error by inserting YHWH. For a more thorough explanation concerning the use of the sacred names of God (without resorting to unscriptural extremes), "The Third Commandment" may be read online or the book Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH thy God in vain may be ordered from Mission to Israel Ministries, PO Box 248, Scottsbluff, Nebraska 69363, for a suggested $4 donation.* 4. See Chapter 28 "Amendment 19: The Curse of Women's Suffrage," for more regarding the unbiblical nature of women's suffrage.
*We are admonished in Matthew 10:8 "freely ye have received, freely give." Although we have suggested a price for our books, we do not sell them. In keeping with 2 Corinthians 9:7, this ministry is supported by freewill offerings. If you cannot afford the suggested price, inform us of your situation, and we will be pleased to provide you with whatever you need for whatever you can send.