Constitution the Seemingly Foundational Aspects

Constitution

The seemingly foundational aspects of universal suffrage, based on age, race and gender is often something many people in the United States take for granted as something that if not an innate semblance of the original constitution, at least one that was worked out as a matter of coarse rather quickly in the history of the nation. Yet, this is clearly not the case as all the suffrage amendments to the constitution were hard fought and hard won by the different groups that helped make them permanent additions to the laws of this land. In this work the 26th amendment will be discussed, as the amendment that provided for universal suffrage based on the age of 18 it is often one that is ignored in the history books and among the people of the U.S. Very few people are aware that it was not confirmed until 1971.

In Cogan's 1997 article discussing the universal suffrage amendments that occurred during the 19th century a statement is made with regard to the manner in which people often see these amendments and nothing can be more true than of the 26th amendment.

Wishing to see the trajectory of American history as progressive and democratic,(1) historians have ignored the complexities of suffrage expansion in the nineteenth century -- especially the interrelation of exclusion and inclusion.(2) This Note looks at the trajectory of suffrage reform from the late eighteenth century to the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment and argues that reformers were obsessed with the inner qualities of persons. Whereas the eighteenth century had located a person's capacity for political participation externally (in material things, such as property),(3) the nineteenth century found these qualities internally (in innate and heritable traits, such as intelligence).(4) Both enfranchisement and disenfranchisement reflected this change of perspective, this look within.(5)

Cogan, 473)

Cogan's point is that the collective conscience of the nation changed from one that demanded credibility through propertied rights to one that assumed credibility based on inalienable rights, such as those discussed in much earlier constitutional points.

The most foundational and frequently ignored constitutional amendment that enfranchises people, who had previously been disenfranchised is the one that universalizes the voting age to 18, the 26th.

Historians afforded few pages to the sporadic youth suffrage struggle that prevailed in the United States for more than 100 years. Therefore, the granting of teenage suffrage by way of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, in 1971, aroused contemporary national interest in the "sudden" enfranchisement of 18- to 20-year-olds.

Cultice xi)

This amendment not only marks a change in the collective idea of what makes a person worthy of voice, but also demonstrates one of the first attempts to enforce the idea that an individual of a certain age should have universal rights. The point being made is that this was not as assumed a new movement but one that has historical a historical basis.