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Missouri teens want to lower the voting age to 16 in local and school elections
(news.stlpublicradio.org)
The hottest take is that the voting age should automatically slide to be the youngest age someone has been tried as an adult in the justice system...
Or lowest age to work without parental consent. Otherwise 16 year olds can't vote for who gets to tax them.
That's a damn fine take right there.
The graduated system of adulthood in this country is very odd in many ways. The age of consent, when you're old enough to start drawing a paycheck, when you're allowed to start driving, when you're allowed to start voting, and when you're allowed to buy marajuana or alcohol are all different ages. And through all of this you're expected to conduct yourself like an adult while your brain chemistry is going through radical changes. I don't know what the right system is, but I feel like it's surely not this one. Maybe the increased franchisement these kids are asking for is right. Maybe we should just be expecting less from our youth. I don't know
i think it makes sense for voting age to be 16 at least in some cases; internationally it's not that weird of a policy. actually i think a big problem would just be the logistics of carrying it out: since the US doesn't inherently have distinct election dates for municipal, local, state, and federal elections, it's possible for all of them to be on the same ballot (meaning you could be eligible to vote in some races but not others and you'd be potentially committing a crime if you did).
DC and cities in three states allow noncitizen to vote in local elections, so clearly there's a way to get it done. I suspect it's as Nougat suggests, a separate ballot for non-citizens and/or under-18 voters.
So there's two ballots instead of one. They already give you the ballot for the specific district you're in when you go to vote now. Problem solved.
that's a solution--but i'm guessing that'd singlehandedly double the additional overhead and complexity for printing and sending out ballots, on top of what those already have to account for.
My town has six districts for the village board but we only have one polling place for the whole town (it's a small town) additionally you can vote early at the county office.
They simply print your ballot when you give them your name at the polling place. You fill in the bubbles and then put it into the ballot machine. It counts it electronically, but it drops down into a locked cabinet.
I'm assuming it's the same procedure for everyone in my county for all the different voting/government body districts people are in.
Yeah I feel like I sound more negative about this than I am. I think generally speaking we should be raising the age of consent (this is the most critical change, I'm not okay with it being 14 in places), raising the age you're allowed to start hiring at (seriously what the fuck Arkansas), prooobably leaving the driving age where it is though I've heard strong arguments 16 is the worst age for motor control, lowering the voting age, and raising the age you can buy lotto tickets and cigarettes at. In fact abolish the lottory. Tax the rich instead
The graduated system of adulthood in this country is very odd in many ways. The age of consent, when you're old enough to start drawing a paycheck, when you're allowed to start driving, when you're allowed to start voting, and when you're allowed to buy marajuana or alcohol are all different ages. And through all of this you're expected to conduct yourself like an adult while your brain chemistry is going through radical changes.
I'm not so sure I completely agree. A better done graduated system could do a lot better than a single all or nothing system could. Specifically, drugs in general. It's not just that drugs are bad or whatever. it's that the ease with which a company can exploit a younger person, combined with the fact that under a general age the young adults are all having their brains still developed, that the cost to society for allowing drug use is a lot higher than the cost of allowing drug use for older folks.
This is a good idea. Politics skews way too far to the older side, when it is the younger who will be more affected. 16 year olds can drive and have a job, and while they have maturing to do, they are absolutely capable of the level of thought required to vote. Ashcroft's complaint about 14 year olds wanting to vote is quite valid- but hey, maybe he's right and they should just aim for 14 right out the gate! Lol.. I doubt this will go anywhere, but I hope I am surprised.
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I love this idea. After watching how irresponsible our state was with kids' health and education these last three years, it might be time to give students a real, legitimate voice in their own public schooling.
Seems like a decent idea. I have a pet theory that it's not strictly that young people don't vote, but that there is a relatively constant duration people who suddenly can vote take to learn that that is important. Kids, who can't vote, don't bother to think about it. And new voters tend to focus solely on the Presidential election. I think it takes roughly 8 years (two presidential elections) for people to learn that not voting has consequences. If we started kids voting earlier, we may find that they become regular voters earlier as well.
Good for them; hope it works.
There is not a single argument against lowering the voting age that holds water.
Try it for yourself: think of any argument against it. "But what if they..." fill in the blank. And then realize old people already do that and we don't require them not to.
"They don't understand the issues!" MF'er, do you? "The Issues" is such a vague, broad, and nebulous term that you could use this to argue that anybody who can't reproduce your exact opinions on demand "doesn't understand the issues." And here's the thing: you're not required to. Old people can vote literally by throwing darts at a board and not be disenfranchised for it.
"They'll just vote for a celebrity." Young people didn't have the vote when Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse "the Body" Ventura, or Donald fucking Trump got elected to office. Hell, old people elected former actor Ronald Reagan and 40-odd years later we still haven't recovered from the damage he did to the country and probably never will.
"They'll vote for whoever is good-looking." Disregarding that literally nobody on earth is that shallow, young people didn't have the vote when Kennedy got elected.
"They'll vote for whoever their parents do." One would hope so; that's called "instilling values" and it's something most families strive for.
"They'll vote against whoever their parents do!" Disregarding that this is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" logical-fallacy-circlejerk... one would hope so; that's called "establishing your own identity" and it's something most people should strive for.
And on and on. Every argument against lowering or even abolishing the voting age is like this. Either its a non-issue being made to sound like a catastrophe, or its something that old people already do and we don't take away their rights for it.
I also like to draw analogies to other age restrictions. If they're allowed to drive a car, literally the most dangerous thing they can do in terms of causes of death, then how can they not be responsible enough to vote for their leaders?
We also have no qualms about sentencing 16 year olds as adults if they commit a bad enough crime. This one strikes me as society knowing 16 year olds are perfectly capable of being responsible but we just give them a bit more leeway.
And personally, I've met plenty of 16 year olds that are better informed about politics than a number of adults I know.
I am so happy to find people like you here in fediverse. (I'm viewing this from kbin; not sure where you are; doesn't matter! Here we are. It's great.) I've been absolutely crucified on Reddit for posting pro-youth sentiments. It feels like most of society treats young people like dangerous aliens or something. So to find a friendly voice so quickly is really uplifting.
Some of it is distrust of young people. Some of it is a slavish devotion to “the rules” or “the way ~~it’s always been~~ I’ve always known it to be”.
I don’t get the former, and I’m doing my best to never settle for “the rules” as an answer without those rules being grounded and justifiable.
Driving a car carries immediate physical consequences, something much easier to grasp than abstract consequences.
We don't dump everything on them at once, because each step of adulthood and personal responsibility is hard.
Sure, and this is another gradation of voting; this would only be for local and school elections, which can have pretty immediate consequences for teens. In fact, 16 year olds (and others around that age) are the best positioned to have a say about school board policy, because they have been and currently are directly affected.
I do appreciate your perspective that a 'stepwise' system of adulthood can have huge benefits. I think this proposal actually fits quite nicely into it. They aren't voting for president; they're voting for the who will run the place they spend 8 hours per day.
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This. For all the bad votes young people may cast, I can hardly imagine them doing any worse than the adults have already done.
But let's be honest. The real objection to letting young people vote is that they might vote left-wing. Every other objection is just a dog whistle for that one.
“They don’t understand the issues!”
I love how right-wingers make the argument that young people are too dumb to vote and only adults are smart enough, but when ranked-choice/approval/etc voting reform is the issue at hand, they make the exact opposite argument—that adults are too dumb to understand the new voting system!
And how is that even a bad thing? If some people can't even understand how to vote, they definitely can't understand the issues they're voting on.
It's not whataboutism. I'm guessing you've never raised a teen?
I'm personally surprised by how important it has been to my child to chop up learning adulthood into small pieces. It's a lot to take on all at once, and functioning adults take their knowledge for granted.
If somebody is old enough to work at a Target and get yelled at by Karens they automatically deserve the right to vote in my book.
Finally! 😏 The world is changing: the concept of a minor no longer makes sense in a context of irresponsible adults like today! Moreover, today's kids have no right to decide the future that is penalizing them from an environmental and work point of view!
https://www.informapirata.it/2023/03/28/sinite-parvulos-a-truly-universal-suffrage/
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I feel like there would be quite the pushback from a certain group of individuals.
I mean, if the young adults that can currently vote actually did, that might make a difference too
That is true, so many of my peers don't vote.
Their trying to INDOCTORATE our kids to the left at an even earlier age!!1!1!!
The same group of people who find child labour and forcing a child to go through pregnancy completely acceptable?
This works great here in Scotland (unless you ask the Tories, who probably do worse because of it 🙃). Push for it!
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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