The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, dropped the voting age from 21 to 18 in all federal, state, and local elections. Congress passed the amendment in response to Vietnam War protests—students argued that if 18-year-olds could be drafted to fight and die, they should vote on the politicians sending them to war. The amendment took just 100 days to ratify, the fastest in U.S. history, with 42 states approving between March and July 1971. President Nixon signed the certification on July 5, 1971, adding 11 million young voters to the electorate overnight. Before the amendment, states set their own voting ages—Georgia and Kentucky allowed 18-year-olds to vote in state elections as early as 1943, while most states required voters to be 21. The Supreme Court''s 1970 ruling in Oregon v. Mitchell declared Congress could set the voting age for federal elections but not state contests, creating chaos where different ages applied to different races on the same ballot. The 26th Amendment resolved this by establishing 18 as the uniform standard nationwide.