Constitution Explained: Voting Rights, Taxes, and More | History in 5 | PragerU Kids

Before we start this episode, you should know that History in 5 is a series that teaches about America's greatest ideas in a fun, conversational, age-appropriate style for tweens. From civics to history to our U.S. Constitution and beyond. Enjoy more free videos like this for kids of all ages on our website. And for parents and teachers, subscribe for free to PragerUKids.com. As you know by now, the founders made sure that we had a way to update the Constitution. We call these updates amendments. Guess how many amendments have been proposed since the Constitution was approved? Over 11,000. Imagine the Constitution changing 11,000 times. It'd be like playing a board game and having the rules change every time you roll the dice. It'd be impossible to play with all the confusion, arguing, and fighting. Fortunately, the founders saw this coming. So they made it possible to make changes, but not easy. Out of the 11,000 amendments proposed, guess how many actually passed? 27. Yeah, 27. I mean, with those odds, passing an amendment is about as likely as finding two matching socks and then immediately winning the lottery. Yes! So these 27 amendments must be pretty special, right? Well, yes and no. Some were just tweaks that needed to be made to make things work better. And some were a pretty big deal. Let's find out which was which. We already know the first 10 amendments are the Bill of Rights. These protect our basic freedoms. As we saw in the last episode, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments freed the slaves and protected their rights after the Civil War. So what about the rest of the amendments? This is going to get a little nerdy, but hey, being smart is fun. So back to the amendments that nobody knows. They fall into three categories, allowing more people to vote, giving more power to the government, and solving president stuff. We'll start with the first, allowing more people to vote. The 17th amendment allows senators to be elected directly by the people, rather than being appointed by state officials. Yeah, that's how it used to be done. Now, ordinary voters get to decide. The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote. It might sound strange to you, but this is a relatively new thing. For most of history, women didn't have this right, and now they do. The 23rd amendment gave Washington D.C. electoral votes, just like the states. This way, the votes of people who live there could have a real impact on elections. The 24th amendment banned states from making people pay if they wanted to vote. This was called a poll tax, and was used in the South to keep Black Americans from voting. Yeah, that was really bad, but this fixed it. The 26th amendment lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18. If you're old enough to go to war and die for your country, you're old enough to vote. Next are the amendments that gave the government more power. The 16th amendment gave the government the power to collect income tax. Ouch. The 18th amendment banned the making and selling of alcoholic beverages. Yup, beer was banned. But wait, alcohol isn't banned now, right? Yeah, this one didn't last long. The 21st amendment undid the 18th. People wanted their beer. And last, amendments that fixed issues related to the office of the president. The presidential stuff. The 20th amendment said that presidents take office in January instead of March. It sounds minor, but it allowed new presidents to get to work faster. The 22nd amendment limited the president to two terms. George Washington set the example. Two terms was enough. Every president after him agreed. Until Franklin D. Roosevelt got a little carried away and served four terms. Double Washington. Kind of like that friend who doesn't know when to leave and eats all your chips. Dude, you've been here like three days. The 25th amendment gave the vice president the authority to take over for the president. In case he goes crazy or gets really sick and can't do his job. The founders' plan to make changes possible but difficult turned out to be really smart. After about 250 years and over 11,000 amendments proposed, only 27 have been added. So what does that tell you? The founders were humble enough to know that changes would be necessary. But smart enough to know that too many changes would lead to chaos. Genius. Thank you so much for watching this episode of History in 5. You can watch the full series and more on our website. And parents, make sure you subscribe at PragerUKids.com to never miss an episode.