Voting rules in the Constitution

The Twenty-sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, says the right to vote of citizens eighteen or older shall not be denied or abridged on account of age. It lowered the voting age from 21 during the Vietnam War, when many argued that people old enough to be drafted were old enough to vote. Choice B states that rule.

As the choices show, the Constitution leaves many voting rules to the states, and most of the other options are either state choices or the reverse of what the amendments say.

Each choice

• A. No amendment gives noncitizens the vote. States set voter qualifications, and all of them now require citizenship.
• B (correct). The Twenty-sixth Amendment bars denying the vote on account of age to anyone eighteen or older.
• C. The Constitution lets states take the vote away for a crime, and many states limit voting by people with felony records.
• D. No amendment forbids residency requirements. States can set them, though courts have limited very long ones.
• E. This is the reverse of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which banned poll taxes in federal elections. The Court later struck them down in state elections too.