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Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law honored Constitution Day and National Voter Registration Day with a continuing legal education event on the 26th Amendment Tuesday evening.
The event was part of an annal lecture series that honors that late U.S. Senator Birch Bayh. Bayh was the architect of the 26th Amendment, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote in 1971.
Constitutional rights litigator and election law scholar Yael Bromberg lectured on the creation and legacy of the 26th Amendment and its relevance today. More than 50 people attended the lecture in the Wynne Courtroom at IU McKinney on Tuesday evening.
“It is truly an honor to be here to celebrate in honor of Birch Bayh, such an enormous architect of constitutional precepts and major congressional statutes, many of which we continue to benefit from today,” Bromberg said.
The 26th Amendment was the fastest ratification change to the U.S. Constitution, taking less than four months. It passed unanimously in the Senate and 401-19 in the House.
“What motivated this passage was a value, a recognition of the value of moral purpose that young people offer in re-energizing the practice of democracy,” Bromberg said.
Bromberg noted that the language of the amendment is similar to the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in 1920.
She added that the amendment shows massive institutional reforms can be accomplished.
“I think that sometimes we become a bit disengaged, apathetic, but the legacy that Senator Bayh has left us is an opportunity to lean in and not to opt out,” Bromberg said.
She said that in some ways it is a forgotten amendment despite being the most recent voting rights amendment to be ratified.
“The future of the amendment is largely unwritten, which makes it really fun to explore and think about today,” Bromberg said.
Bromberg discussed how there are “special burdens” voters across the country face that have to do with their age.
In the Hoosier state, if a voter wants to vote by absentee by mail one of the reasons to request a vote-by-mail ballot is being at least 65 years old.
One of the other “special burdens” Bromberg mention in the country is having polling places on university campus. She mentioned the case with Bard College in New York in which the state’s appellate court ruled a polling place could be on the campus and that efforts to prevent it were “arbitrary.”
The Purdue Exponent recently reported that there won’t be a polling place on Purdue University’s campus this year despite there being one in the past.
“These are systemic issues that require systemic solutions,” Bromberg said.
She noted how Alexander Hamilton was in his early 20s when he became a founding father and Frederick Douglass was 23 years old when he took the state the Massachusetts anti-slavery society.
“While it might be easy to write off young people as apathetic, tuned out, wrong, disengaged, etc., I see this as an invitation to lean in and to work with them. I think that our our nation’s history bears that out, and this will only present our future if we do so,” Bromberg said.
First-year law students who attended the lecture said they didn’t previously know much about the 26th Amendment.
“I honestly had no idea,” Ethan Miner said.
Leah Bechtold said she was aware of Bayh’s involvement with Title IX and found it interesting to learn about his work with the 26th Amendment.
“Learning more about this from someone with a lot of knowledge was nice,” Bechtold said.
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