Jack of Harts

The Twenty-Seventh Amendment was the first of twelve amendments proposed to the Constitution. The last ten were approved and became the Bill of Rights. The second, concerning changing how Representatives were apportioned, failed to be passed, but the general idea was later enacted through legislation. The first fell out of thought and memory and languished as one of the failed amendments for nearly two hundred years. A college student decided to write a paper for his government class about this amendment in 1982, and said it could still be passed because it had no end-date in it. He turned that paper into a national campaign and it moved through the States until it was passed in 1992, over two centuries after it was proposed. What does it do? It states that no law changing how much a Senator or Representative makes is allowed to take effect until after the next national election. And so passes the story of both the strangest but also most simple and common sensical of our amendments.

The Twenty-Third Amendment followed the tradition of many other amendments by changing the voting electorate. In this case, the argument was that it was unfair to deny citizens of the capital to vote for the Presidency. Most people at the time did not consider this a partisan issue and both major parties supported changing it. The amendment granted the District of Columbia the number of electors it would have if had two Senators and the appropriate number of Representatives if apportioned, as long as that number was not more than the smallest State. They have had three electors in every election since, and all but 1 voted Democrat.

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment was another one that focused on changing the voting electorate. Previous amendments addressed race or sex. This one age. The minimum voting age in America was 21 at the time. It was argued that it was unfair to draft boys at 18 but not allow them to vote until they were 21. This amendment addressed that argument and changed the minimum voting age to 18.