According to Mass Vote, in 1776 the right to vote began in America as a legal privilege almost exclusively available to white, property-owning, Protestant men. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment passed, giving women the right to vote in both state and federal elections. In 1965, The Voting Rights Act is signed into law, prohibiting any election practice from denying the right to vote to citizens on the basis of race. And in 1971, the age to vote was lowered to eighteen years old (Classical Homeschooling). Furthermore, Americans struggled and fought for years for the right to vote whether it was because of race, gender, or age. They wanted the right to express their opinion and vote on what they wanted. However, today, people take advantage of these rights by not voting and appear to be throwing away all the sacrifices made for these rights. In 1774, our founding fathers wrote this in the Journal of the Continental Congress, "It is an indispensable duty which we owe to God, our country, ourselves and posterity, by all lawful ways and means in our power to maintain, defend and preserve these civil and religious rights and liberties for which many of our fathers fought, bled and died, and to hand them down entire to future generations" (Providence