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JD Vance’s child-voting “experiment” would be great—for Democrats
(www.motherjones.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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politics
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Children should be allowed to vote. Kids would show up in droves. They'd get their parents voting. I'd love seeing politicians that were forced to pander to young people. There's no downside.
People like Mr.Beast gain their massive success from producing overstimulating content that attracts a forever young audience that doesn't recognize the basic manipulation and scams that he employs.
This is what politics would turn into if we earnestly let kids vote. Manipulating child audiences is practically a science now.
Even discounting that, in 2016 when I was 16 I was a "both sides are bad" centrist type. I simply didn't have the roots to consider how things like basic public policies would affect me personally. You need some grounded experience in order to realize that the things on screen will affect you and your community directly.
That's crap. Kids don't outnumber adults, and politicians would still need to appeal to older generations.
Also, when you were 16, you were right. Both sides are bad. But one side is much, much worse. Politicians would need to spend some time and effort engaging with children and explaining why their policies do matter. Imagine how valuable that would be for a significant population of adults!
Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. They can smell bullshit, and they will vote their conscience.
Maybe I’m an outlier or I was a shitty kid, but I was straight up defending Cheney in high school, because my dad was a bush fan. My first year of college, I entered rapid decompression and started understanding how my morals actually aligned with politics. I don’t think it’s because I was a dumb kid, but kids are really influenced by their parents.
That said, it doesn’t matter if there are more republican voters, it is morally right imo to allow children 15/16+ to vote.
12 year old me didn't know anything and knew it. 16 year old me still didn't know shit but believed he knew everything. Allowing any age to vote is crazy.
That's the same argument that was made against women's suffrage. Adults are influenced by their parents, their peers, their employers, their professors, and many many adults live in a social echochamber that gives them a skewed sense of the world. That's still not an argument to deny the right to vote.
Exactly, we tend to reflect our parents from a young age. Mostly because their world view is basically what we know.
It isn’t until we get out from under that, that we fcan begin to form our own perceptions.
I feel this would work in theory, but in practice the path of least resistance for a political party wouldn't be to appeal to young voters and teach policy. It would be to crank up the indoctrination machine and encourage parents to do so too.
I'm sure some families would teach their children how the world works, but most would just not change; or they'd indoctrinate and abuse their kids to supporting their political party (even harder than before).
That's happening anyway. You're describing the current world we live in.
You know what would help kids see through their parents' bullshit? If adults and other kids were talking directly to them about issues relevant to their lives.
Kids of 1 aren't smarter than we give them credit for. People who can't speak in sentences or wipe their own butts probably shouldn't be weighing in on the presidential election.
Most adults barely have a clue about the issues they're voting on, let alone kids. And many topics that are voted on aren't really appropriate for children to be discussing. Plus, would you really want our schools to become 6 hours of propaganda for whatever political party is in charge?
Children would be voting virtually at random, to the point where elections would essentially be decided by random chance.
I’d say the vast majority of things we vote on in politics can be discussed with children. Kids who are talked to like adults mature far more gracefully than those who are artificially shielded from anything mildly uncomfortable.
Politicians should have to explain directly to kids why their family is deep in medical debt. Or why they can’t have certain books in their library. Or why we should bomb children in other countries.
Are you absolutely insane? These are examples of things I don't want being discussed in my kids' classrooms (High school classrooms as a matter of general discussion notwithstanding). A 10 year old kid does not need to be spending his days discussing the world of geopolitics. There is a such thing as "age appropriate", you know.
When I was in kindergarten (back in the 70s), my teacher was Jewish. Do you know how she explained the difference between Christmas and Hannukah to us? "You know how Santa comes by and gives you some gifts on Christmas morning? Well instead of getting all the gifts at once they get 1 a day for a 8 days instead. You get to put up a tree, they use a menorah (while showing us one)"
We were 5 years old. Was that accurate? Not entirely. Was it enough for a 5 year old? Absolutely. "Jews celebrate things a little differently than you do, and that's OK". That's it. That was the message. And it's all we needed to know. We didn't need to get into some discussion over Israel or get into some religious viewpoints or anything. 5 year olds don't need to worry about that shit. Same thing applies here. We don't need to make them worry about topics that their parents probably barely understand. Your idea would destroy the mental health of children who are in no way prepared to handle and process those kind of topics.
Go to bed gramps
I think you underestimate the capability of children to understand sensitive topics and maintain their mental health. There’s not a lot of research on it either way yet, but the little I’ve seen is all in favor of having the difficult discussions with your kids, as early as possible.
Feel free to send me some peer reviewed research that says otherwise though, I’m always willing to listen if there are facts being brought to the table.
What topics are we voting that are not appropriate for children? I went to the polls with my dad almost every time he voted starting at age 6 and he talked with me about most of it.
More adults would have a better idea if they had been voting as kids. And if you don't think topics like abortion affect kids, you're out of your fucking mind. Schools are already ideological battlefields, with conservatives posting pictures of Jesus and the 10 commandments, forcing kids to stand and pledge allegiance to their God, demanding kids conform to gender roles and societal norms. Shouldn't the people most affected by those decisions have some say in them?
Adults vote at random. We don't take away their right to vote just because they are uninformed.
You think a 6, 10, 12 year old is going to vote based on their understanding of the significant geopolitical issues of the day or something?
For all the bullshit stories that people have said about "When I was 10 years old, my mommy told me all about North Korea and......oh fucking bullshit she did. But let's say those stories actually happened. Do you think that supposed 10 year old was given accurate, unbiased information? When they walk into a voting booth, do you think they're going to be able to understand, or in many cases even read the information being given to them?
At best, you would have children being marched into voting booths and checking off whatever boxes mommy and daddy told them to check off and then they'll go out and get some ice cream. You would be giving parents of large families outsized voting power, as that mother of 8 now essentially has 9 votes instead of just one. You would basically be giving the JD Vances of the world exactly what they want.
And that's a best case scenario. Worst case scenario is that we end up with another Donald Trump because there were enough kids in swing states that voted for him either because their parents told them to or they just recognized the name from TV and went with it. Voting results would have little to do with the issues or even party politics and more to do with just random chance. It would be basically flipping a coin with a lot of extra steps.
Or, we end up with a GOP takeover because Democrats tend to have less children than Republicans and would therefore have less voting power in a race that was already skewed in favor of the GOP by the electoral college.
What age and why?