After Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to address rampant voting discrimination against racial minorities, voting rights advocates argued for federal legislation to remove other barriers to voter registration in the United States. The basic requirements to vote are the same in all states. A person has to be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years old, and a resident of the state in which he or she is voting. However, initial legislative efforts to create national voter registration standards for federal elections failed. In the early 1970s, Congress considered several proposals to require the U.S. Census Bureau to mail voter registration forms to every household, none of which passed. In the mid and late 1970s, proposals to require certain public agency offices to make voter registration forms available and to require states to allow Election Day voter registration failed. Other bills introduced during the 1980s also failed.