About two years ago now, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park writing my initial thoughts on what I didn’t know then but would come to know as Youth Rights.
I don’t think I’ll ever remember why she did, but about halfway through the day Greta Thunberg came to mind, and I looked up the voting age in Sweden. And my blood boiled in a way I’ve never experienced in my entire life.
16 years old and one of the most famous and recognizable political activists in the world. 16 years old giving a confident, impassioned, admonishing speech to the fucking UN. 16 years old with no legal right to a voice in her country. No voice to vote for the policies she believed in or the people who might enact them.
My writing, already vitriolic to a fault, managed to become even moreso but with the topic abruptly switched to voting. For the first time in my life, I considered where I’d place the voting age if I could do so unilaterally. Not long into considering it I had a thought that I wrote down immediately, a question I’ve asked well over 100 times at this point with no substantial answer:
When is it reasonable to say to a person, ‘If you’re not at least this old, then I don’t give a fuck what you think’?
And from the moment I had that thought, I have been unable to place the voting age.
You must log in or register to comment.
Same as the age you can work and pay taxes.
14 is typically the minimum age to have a job (in the US at least).
Then that’s the age we should be able to vote.
And if people don’t like it, maybe we outlaw child labor. 🤷♀️
I was offered a job at a computer repair shop at age 14. Dude had to retract his offer when I told him my age, he assumed I was 17 or older.
Mississippi.
According to this it would have been legal to hire you. There’s a lot of restrictions when it comes to number of hours and time of day that minors are allowed to work though which is probably what they didn’t want to deal with.
Interesting. I’m not quite sure what the laws were back in 1996, but yeah with school and all, plus the travel distance of over 30 miles, even if it was legal for me to work a few hours a day after school, it wouldn’t have been practical at all.
Still nice that he offered the job, I was trying to brainstorm and troubleshoot why my first sound card didn’t work. Turned out he got a defective batch, like 3 other customers had the same issues.
He knew I did all the proper troubleshooting already. Honestly I forget what model sound card it was, but once I proved it didn’t work, he gave me a different card that cost twice as much, for no extra money.
Man, it’s a tough one.
In theory, nobody should be disenfranchised by age at all. But at what age would they be able to vote, as in understand what to do, how to do it, and do so without adult supervision?
Until they reach that point, it’s essentially their parents or guardians getting an extra vote.
And then you have to look at other things we limit minors on by virtue of not being able to make informed decisions. So, would we go with driving age, since that’s when we trust them with a ton of death machine? Drinking age? Age of consent for sex (which isn’t always 18)?
If we change it away from 18 to lower, showing that they have the full rights of any citizen, why don’t they get those other rights with enfranchisement? Why is someone able to vote like someone that has the ability to make an informed choice, but they can’t drink? Hell, that’s already a problem since 18 year olds can be sent to fight and die in the military, but can’t have a beer legally.
I would be fine with 16 being the age of majority for everything if the individual wanted it. You wanna step into adult life, with all the rights and responsibilities, I don’t have an objection to that at 16. I had too many patients that were married and working before 18 to pretend that it isn’t realistic for someone that age to step into adulthood. I don’t think it’s the best choice, but I wouldn’t fight it if the world decided that way.
I could definitely made an informed decision for voting at 16. I had access to alcohol, and was able to make the decision to not use it, same with tobacco. I had access to sex, and made the decision to make it safe sex. I was a decent driver, and didn’t have even a fender bender until I was 19, and I wasn’t the one that caused it then. All of the stuff that we limit to “adults”, I know I would have been fully capable of making informed and conscientious decision about any of them.
But I also knew other teenagers that were absolute morons that couldn’t be trusted not to jerk off in the school bathroom. I knew 16 yos that wrecked cars and put other people’s lives at risk in the process. So I’m okay with the age of majority being 18 too; some of those morons would just flip a coin for their vote, and the mock votes we’d have in school were laughable across the board.
Not everyone can make an informed and conscientious decision at 30, much less 18.
So I don’t really think it needs to change, but I agree with you that it sucks that it’s so arbitrary.
We seem pretty well-aligned. Personally I think 16 is the absolute latest a person ought to have the liberty to do anything that we age restrict. I was talking to someone from Scotland recently where the Age of Majority is 16 and he said that it’s not uncommon there for 16yos to graduate their school system, marry their person, and start a family.
So to me that is at least some amount of evidence that if we simply perceived 16yos as adults, they would behave more like adults.
I think it should be 16 or so. If you can wreck my car, you should be able to vote.
I think it should be whatever the age is to be able to work a job.
You pay taxes at 14 years old because your asshole of a governor got paid by the meat packing industry? You get to vote.
I would never let 16 year old me vote.
25 is a solid voting age informed by life experience in the “real world” and a developed brain. Nobody in their late teens to mid 20s can vote with a grasp of reality and understanding of the actual problems that plague society. There is too much optimism and idealistic intentions at those ages. Progress is a slow march against an established defense. Progress, no matter the speed, gains more than attempting brute force attacks against a greater dying populous fervent in their position in opposition.
With a declining birth rate, slow and steady wins the race; or maybe Idiocracy was a documentary and WALL-E is a hopeful outcome of Surrogates.
IMO, it should be 16. It should be the earliest age that you can work in a traditional job, or begin service in one’s armed forces. Many right-wing people hate this idea because young people are very left-leaning, but it is unfair to expect someone to contribute to a society that bans them from having a say in its outcome.
More so than age, I think we should all get a holiday to vote, that holiday’s length should be calculated by population size to accomdate congestion. Then, somehow make voting fun and exciting, the actual experience of filling out a ballot, so these fucking people actually come out to vote. So many fucking people dont even vote. As soon as you are considered an adult you should be able to vote, whatever age that may be to society at large.
And, we should establish something where kids get to vote on something. Anything that directly affects them, maybe some locale thing, and have it be enacted for a period of time. We need people, all people, to physically experience the laws they vote for. Engrain that in them so they dont forget these consequences are real and it matters.
Also: the vast majority of 18 year olds in the states are in, or just graduated, high school. Every single high school should also serve as a dedicated polling station for their students who are of voting age, as a matter of federal law. For state and local elections, too - not just presidential and congressional midterms.
This is one of the things I like about Germany. We always vote on Sundays, which is practically a holiday for us, unlike in the US where stores are still open.
It’s really frustrating how little value so many adults assign to the thoughts and feelings of kids. I felt the effects of that a lot while growing up.
Idk. If it were up to me, I think I’d make the voting age maybe 14 or 15. It’s not that an 8-year-old’s feelings don’t matter (to me, at least), but you need to allow them enough time and brain development to be able to start to learn about and understand these kinds of things.
There should also be accompanying education surrounding different political ideologies, history, policies, propaganda tactics, ect., but I’m sure that’d be very unpopular with a lot of parents.
If you’re going to be eighteen during the person you vote for’s term you should be able to vote.
I’ve had this exact same thought in response to the logic that the voting age was lowered to 18 during Vietnam so that 18yos could vote for a president who might draft them. But that logic extends to 14yos who may end up being drafted at 18 during the president’s term.
That’s an interesting take but with our term lengths that means a 15y can vote for president and senator but can’t vote for a house rep.
Yes, that’s exactly what it means.
I’m conflicted on this. I used to think kids at 16 would be a good counterpart to old people, being more revolutionary in nature and so on. Maybe they don’t have a good sense of how things work in life yet but it would help balance out the people who are so stuck in the old ways that it ends up being fair.
But the reality I see is that they are very easily manipulated by unregulated media like TikTok and would vote for the same extreme right wing party as old people. Surveys here in Germany are a bit disturbing…
Can’t we instead take away voting rights from old people? Also kinda wrong.
How about a voting license that needs to be renewed every 30 years? You have to pass a test that checks if you are capable of thinking objectively or something like that.
How about a voting license that needs to be renewed every 30 years? You have to pass a test that checks if you are capable of thinking objectively or something like that.
Any type of criteria that is not absolute (like age), can and will be used to exclude certain groups of people from voting.
Lots of these voter tests were implemented during the Jim Crow era (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test). Reimplementation would be disastrous for many groups of people.
That’s a different test and the rules were flawed because it was obviously made to discriminate african americans. But I’m aware it’s not as simple as it sounds to me and leans towards ableist.
But the reality I see is that they are very easily manipulated by unregulated media like TikTok
As opposed to adults?
I’ve never seen any evidence that adults aren’t also manipulated by media. I would also add that claiming someone isn’t mentally strong enough to vote by themselves without being subject to others was also used as an argument against both women and black people not being allowed to vote.
I was thinking about white people specifically though. But of course this system can be steered towards whatever the people in charge think it should be steered to. Which is why I don’t think it’s really feasible.
But the reality I see is that they are very easily manipulated by unregulated media like TikTok and would vote for the same extreme right wing party as old people. Surveys here in Germany are a bit disturbing…
The same argument can be made for people of any age.
Can’t we instead take away voting rights from old people? Also kinda wrong.
The same can also be applied to younger people.
Personally, I prefer to err on the side of including them. It’s unjust that we can take advantage of them in so many ways as a teen but they can’t participate in the political system that decides how they can be taken advantage of (work, school, taxes, military, etc.) I know I hated it at that age and as a general rule, I’ve tried not to repeat the same things the adults in my life did that pissed me off when I was a kid. It’s not a perfect approach, but it’s been the correct approach to avoid the problems it caused when I was growing up from being repeated more often than not.
The only way to do right by them is to give them the right. If you are worried about them being manipulated too easily, education is a good fix.
Some people here saying the same age you work and pay taxes and I absolutely agree, but with the caveat that it shouldn’t be compulsory before age 25.
And I pick 25 as it’s the average age iirc the brain is considered to be fully matured.
I personally had no clue of what I was doing and regret my first few rounds voting. I was aware at the time that I lacked the information and the big picture view of the political situation to make an informed decision though, and wished I could avoid voting entirely but in my country it was compulsory.
People over 80 don’t have as much of a stake in the future. Maybe they should lose the vote?
16 - 65
Aside from practical reasons like being able to read and write, I think the age to vote should be as low as possible.
People are concerned that parents will coerce their kids, but that would happen across the board. It would come out in the wash.
The most important thing is that folks are civically engaged as young as possible. They are invested in the outcome and exercise their rights early.
I would say a good starting point would be third grade. Right when you begin learning social studies.
But it wouldn’t come out in the wash. Crazy people would be incentivized to have even more kids to increase their vote. They already do it for “God’s will”, so why not do it for America?
Yes that’s partly the idea. It doesn’t tip the scale. The idea with lowering the voting age as possible it does come out in the wash, but the benefit is that kids are civically engaged. The hope being that engagement carries over as they get older
I could see some kind of arrangement where the age would be something reasonable like 16-18, but then there is a test you can write (basic civics questions eg. who are the candidates, what does the legislative branch do, etc.) and if you pass that test, kind of like a learner’s permit for driving, you can vote even if you’re under that age, down to a hard cutoff of like 13.
16 is the latest I’d say. Even younger is fair. If we ask them to go to school where they can get murdered just because we fail to enact reasonable gun laws, then they should get to vote for the people who don’t care if they die or not.
I think between 16 and 20 is acceptable, but I have one kid who turns 18 a week after the election. So will be almost 22 before they can vote in a presidential election. 19 or 20 before a local or state race.
So I think 16 makes more sense, because the national races being only every 4 years disenfranchises too many young people, everyone who is 15, 16, or 17 at this election won’t actually get to vote at 18.
