COLUMBIA — In the summer of 1971, America enacted its last major expansion of voting rights, lowering the national voting age from 21 to 18 by adopting the 26th Amendment to the Constitution.

Fifty years later, young voters are more engaged in politics than ever, turning out in record numbers for the 2020 election. But activists working to mobilize young South Carolinians say more needs to be done to include them in the political process and ensure they don’t take their hard-earned right for granted.

While the idea of lowering the voting age had come up at various moments in American history, the movement gained steam after the country lowered the military draft age to 18 during World War II, said Jennifer Frost, a professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who has a book about the 26th Amendment coming out later this year.

As the mantra of “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” took hold, some states began independently lowering their voting ages, including Southern states like Georgia and Kentucky.

While South Carolina did not take a similar step, the idea did gain traction with some of the state’s prominent politicians, especially after President Dwight Eisenhower endorsed it.

In his 1954 State of the State address, then-Gov. James Byrnes came out in support of the move, saying age restrictions were arbitrary and the state had “wasted millions in education” if 18-year-olds were not more mature and better informed than citizens of that age a century before, according to a New York Times report on the speech.

Eventually, amid the broader civil rights movement of the 1960s, Congress opted to lower the voting age to 18 as part of the 1970 Voting Rights Act. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law could only apply to federal races, not state races — a decision that risked requiring different ballots for voters depending on their age.

“Obviously it was contradictory, but it was also going to be chaotic,” Frost said. “Secretaries of state of all the states said this is going to cost millions of dollars, an incredible hassle, the 1972 elections are coming up, so we’ve got to do this.”

So Congress proposed and passed a new Constitutional amendment, sending it to the states, with 38 needed to approve it for ratification.

On April 28, 1971, South Carolina became the 26th state to ratify the amendment without a single dissenting vote. The issue “would have sparked extended debate only a year ago,” The Charleston News and Courier wrote, but Congress’ decision to lower the federal voting age already had made the amendment less controversial. 

National ratification took just over three months, making it the fastest amendment ever to be added to the Constitution. But while adoption of the amendment seemed almost effortless by the end, Frost argues that was only because of decades of struggle by proponents of the change.

“It still was not easy, all the work that got to that moment,” Frost said. “I always like that saying, ‘Chance favors those who prepare.’ They were prepared, and when the chance came, they were able to take it.”

As the country marks the amendment’s 50th anniversary this month, new efforts have popped up to make sure young voters take advantage of it.

Youth voter participation increased across the country in the 2020 election, according to an analysis by Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. But South Carolina was below the national average, with 45 percent of eligible 18- to 29-year-olds casting a ballot. 

Secure the Ballot, a new nonpartisan nonprofit, formed in 2020 in an effort to register and mobilize young voters across South Carolina and beyond, providing tools to make it easier to register online and holding events to inform young voters about how they could get more involved.

Lauren Harper, a senior adviser for the organization, said she thinks there’s a long list of reasons why young voters are not historically as engaged as other demographics, including the simple fact that most candidates tend to be older, making it harder for them to relate to their day-to-day concerns.

“It’s not always easy for young people to engage with older generations if they don’t feel like they can be understood,” Harper said. “Conversely, if the candidates don’t feel like they can understand young people, they don’t necessarily engage young people. They think they probably won’t vote anyway, so they won’t even try.”

South Carolina has also not taken some of the steps others have to encourage youth voting. It is one of seven states with a voter ID law that does not allow student IDs to be used as one of the accepted forms.

Patton Byars, the 18-year-old chairman of the South Carolina Teenage Republicans, said he’s found the biggest hurdle to getting people in his age group is just the increasingly divisive nature of national politics.

When candidates on either side of the aisle can transcend that and offer a more uplifting message, Byars said they’re more likely to interest young voters.

“At the end of the day, young voters specifically want to hear hopeful and optimistic conversations, whether that’s in the classroom or on the national stage,” Byars said.