'Old enough to fight, old enough to vote': the 26th amendment.

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An unpopular war in Vietnam and a decade-long youth movement led to 18-year-olds getting the vote in 1971

It was one of the rallying cries of the 1960s: "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote."

Between 1965 and 1973, millions of American soldiers--many of them under 21 and not yet able to vote--were drafted or volunteered to fight in Vietnam.

Then in 1971, the ratification of the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21 and gave 11 million more Americans the right to vote.

It's clear that the war in Vietnam helped make the case for the change.

By the mid-1960s, America's involvement in Vietnam was increasingly unpopular. More than 50,000 Americans died in what turned out to be a faired effort to prevent a Communist takeover of the Southeast Asian country and its neighbors.

To protest the war, students marched and held sit-ins, and they demanded a role in the political process that was having such an impact on their lives.

It turned out to be an incredibly popular idea.

The Founding Fathers intentionally made it hard to amend the Constitution: An amendment must be passed by two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate, and then ratified by 38 state legislatures. This cumbersome process helps explain why the Constitution has been amended only 27 times in 221 years.

But when the 26th Amendment was sent to the state legislatures in March 1971, it was ratified in just 107 days.

The Amendment...