Twenty-sixth Amendment Archives

A voting machine like the one where I cast my first vote. Dsw4, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As I write, over 75 million Americans have cast their vote in the upcoming elections. I plan to vote on Tuesday, November 3. It brings back memories of the first time I vote. Do you remember your first vote?

Mine was on November 7, 1972. Were it not for the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution in 1971, I would not have been able to vote until 1975. It was only the second year eighteen year-olds could vote and the first time eighteen year-olds could vote in a presidential election. The amendment read:

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 the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment meant a great deal to our generation. Until the year I came up for the draft, you could be drafted and sent to Vietnam before you ever had a chance to vote for or against the people making those decisions. It seemed only just that those fighting the nation’s wars should be enfranchised to vote.

In 1972 Richard M. Nixon was running against George McGovern. After Kent State, Nixon began winding down the Vietnam war. That year’s draft lottery took place but no one was drafted. This was good news. My lottery number was 12. Nixon won in a landslide.

I don’t discuss how I vote and I won’t here. Both my wife and I grew up in families where we talked politics but believed in the privacy of the ballot box. We didn’t (and still don’t) think it is anyone’s business how we voted.

Earlier in the fall, I went down to the Board of Elections and filled out the form to vote. There were not a lot of different places where you could register to vote back then. It was the Board of Elections or nothing.

Washington School. Source unknown, reproduced from Old Ohio Schools

On voting day, I walked down the street to my former elementary school, Washington Elementary, to vote. I was a student at Youngstown State and came in after my classes. The entrance for voting was off of Oakwood Avenue in the school basement. Years before when I went to school there, I remember watching people go in to vote. Now I was one of them.

There was a bit of a community celebration when I walked in to vote. My mother was one of the poll workers in our Fourth Ward precinct. A few of the others were former customers on my paper route. It was a proud moment all around when I stepped up to sign the poll book and they matched my signature with the one on record. We didn’t have to provide identification back then. It felt like I had passed into adulthood. Our signature was our identification.

The voting machines were these big hulking gray monsters were you flipped levers beside the names of those you were voting for. When you were done, there was a big lever at waist level that you would pull which would register your vote and pull the curtains open. When you pulled that curtain, you knew that you had voted.

Since then I’ve voted numerous times in five different cities. In every presidential election. But also for local and state officials. For levies and ballot issues. It’s not a perfect system. But I’ve known people who either did not have a vote, or it was a formality in an authoritarian regime. I never forget what that first vote meant. In Youngstown.

What was it like for you to vote for the first time? Please, no comments about the current elections. Share your memories but not your political opinions.

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I voted on Thursday because I will be out of town during the Ohio primary election next Tuesday. I have nothing to say about who I voted for or what party I favor. One of the things both my wife and I grew up with was that these were private matters. Our parents thought the privacy of the ballot box was a good thing, and that it was nobody’s business but ours who we voted for. They certainly would not have gotten the social media frenzy of these days of endlessly talking about the candidates and criticizing each others’ views.

Voting took on a special meaning for those in our high school graduating class. In July of 1971, the twenty-sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving 18 year-olds the right to vote. Most of us in the Chaney High School Class of 1972 had birthdays in late 1971 or in 1972 and would be among the first 18 year-olds to vote under this new amendment. We had grown up in the Vietnam war era where you could be old enough to be drafted without being able to vote for or against those sending you to war. Getting the vote was not incidental to our lives.

Like this year, 1972 was a Presidential election year. I remember the seriousness with which we took this opportunity, not only in voting for a President, but also for the various other elective offices. We studied platforms, records, and the speeches people gave. I remember registering to vote at the Board of Elections, and voting for the first time at my precinct, in the basement of Washington Elementary School, just down the street from my house. Finally, instead of just learning about our government and what it means to be a citizenship, I got to exercise one of the fundamental rights of citizenship.

Our parents always took this seriously. Both my parents served as poll workers in their later years. Many of our families came from countries where there was no such thing as voting. At least in this country, you could have some say over those in positions of power. My impression back then was that high numbers of people in our neighborhood voted, either before or after shifts, or work hours.

I have to say that I find myself in sympathy with the high school seniors who will be 18 in the general election, who filed suit in Ohio to be able to vote in the presidential primary this next week, when told that they could not do so even though they could vote for other candidates and issues. It was encouraging to me to hear that they wanted to. And while writing this post, I learned that a judge has ruled against the Secretary of State, upholding these students right to vote. I’m glad for this example of the difference even a few who care can make. I remember what it meant for us to be able to make that difference in the voting booth. I hope many will exercise that right next Tuesday.

Without discussing politics, what were your memories of voting for the first time?