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.
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16
if you can get taxed as a worker at 16 you get to vote.
This was my first thought, but then it occurred to me that if I was voting at 16, I’d almost certainly be voting for who my parents told me to. I’m still not against it but I think we’d need specialized education and tons of PSAs aimed at kids about it, because unless you’re already rebellious, “my house my rules” could easily be extended to voting.
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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.
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.
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.
Where I grew up, the schools all the way down to elementary school would hold votes to decide some school policies. Things like dress codes and rules governing hallway use, minor stuff, but stuff students care about and that affected us on a daily basis, and whatever won the vote became policy for that semester. We had lines and ballots and everything… The schools were the local voting places, so they had the official voting booths and everything from real elections. Was a great introduction to the process. We’d even get students canvassing in favor of certain policies beforehand if there was something particularly controversial on the ballot.
That’s really cool! What’s an example of something controversial that ended up on the ballot?
The one that I remember best was restricting eating food outside of the cafeteria. Previously it had been allowed to eat outside (the school had a patio area out where kids would wait for the busses, right outside the cafeteria), but there’d been issues with people leaving trash and things out there. The options on the ballot as I remember them were to continue to allow it with no change, to allow it but to implement strict punishments for anyone caught leaving trash around, or to just ban it entirely, and surprisingly ‘Ban it’ ended up winning, but it was really close. There was a group of students really pushing hard for that; they made posters with pictures of garbage and whatnot outside on the patio area and posted them all around, and got enough support to make it happen.
The student council got to decide the items that went on the ballot and the choices (probably with some faculty pressure for certain things, I imagine), so it was all student-led initiatives, which was neat.
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.
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).
It’s 12 in the US for agricultural jobs. That’s when I started corn detassling and tree trimming and filed my first taxes.
Don’t forget acting too. There are babies and toddlers acting and working for pay.
12? Agriculture is completely exempt from child labor laws. There are 8 year olds working those fields.
Eh, close. No age limits if it’s the child’s family farm. Otherwise, it has to be on a farm already not under minimum wage laws plus a waiver plus limited to short-season harvesting. Which is all super easy to abuse and work around. Personally, I never saw it and heard it happens way more in the southern US states.
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.
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.
Parents should be allowed a vote on behalf of their children until their children reach whatever age the jurisdiction allows independent voting.
Hmm, I’d be wary to parents taking advantage of this.
As opposed to billionaires just buying politicians?
Parents somehow “taking advantage” isn’t the problem.
It’s not like someone can just pop out 100 children to skew votes.
It’s not like someone can just pop out 100 children to skew votes
On an individual basis sure, but this still poses two problems:
- Is there a group of people that typically vote a certain who are prone to having more children than other groups. Due to different cultures, this is likely true.
- Why should parents of children get an extra vote over those who can’t have children? Personally I feel that having had children should bear no influence on the power of your voice.
Yeah, I agree that it’s unfair that it underrepresents childless people, and over represents large families.
What annoys me is that a very large portion of the population is disenfranchised (but still taxed in my country). Children have the most to lose, they’re voting with an 80-year view, the oldies are voting with a 5 year view.
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.
Until they reach that point, it’s essentially their parents or guardians getting an extra vote.
Honestly I’ve sometimes thought that parents ought to be able to vote for their kids. At least that gives some form of representation to children.
In that regard, they already have representation by their parents’ votes. All it would achieve is giving parents outsized voting power.
In that regard, they already have representation by their parents’ votes.
But that vote only counts as much as one person, so it doesn’t give any more representation to the child if you ask me. My whole point is that a parent should have outsized voting power because they represent two persons, not one (okay actually each parent would get 1.5 votes as the child’s vote would be split on each parent but my point is the same).
No, no citizen whatsoever should be able to cast the votes of other citizens, period.
If the kid can’t get in the voting booth by themselves, cast their own vote without assistance, then they aren’t voting, someone else is.
That’s ableist. Not every voter can can get in the booth by themselves.
Dude. You know what I’m talking about, don’t pretend otherwise
The idea is that the parent represents the child. We don’t trust children to make an informed vote, but we trust parents to make all kinds of choices for their children, including extremely personal choices. The current alternative is to not give children a vote at all. I think letting parents choose the vote for their child is better, and fits pretty well with all the rest that parents currently choose for their child. I also think it’s better than simply letting children of all ages vote, since again, they probably won’t be able to make an informed vote.
So, all I have to do is pump my semen into enough women, get them knocked up, and have thirty votes? Awesome! I’ll be my own bloc!
I mean… you can already kinda do that right? Raise your children to have similar values to you and they’ll vote like you when they grow up. That happens constantly. There’s just an 18 year latency to it. Obviously you lose the vote once they grow up to vote by themselves. I feel like you’re making a bit of a strawman out of what I’m saying here. We clearly just disagree and that’s okay.
which isn’t a bad thing either if you want to encourage people to have more kids (which of course is debatable whether that should be a goal, but many people think it should)
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.
why don’t they get those other rights with enfranchisement?
ton of death machine?
because that endangers others too
Drinking age?
because alcohol negatively effects development
Age of consent for sex
because teenagers have sex anyway; making it illegal would only be harmful
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.
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.
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.
Any age after passing a basic high school civics test with retesting intervals, age isn’t the thing you’re selecting for it’s the cognitive ability to understand what the government is and how it operates that would be necessary to choose who leads and represents citizens in that organization. We use ages as an approximation instead of doing the work of testing but it may be a poor shortcut.
That’s a dangerous path, and also very likely unconstitutional in the US.
Maybe, but also maybe not. A test that’s targeted specifically at “do you understand how the government functions” is actually quite different from a lot of other tests and less likely to be subjective.
Like, if there was a question, what part of the government writes laws:
- Congress
- The President
- The Supreme Court
if you get that wrong, you probably shouldn’t be voting.
You should take a look at how simple civics tests have already been used in the US election system. It did not go well.
Just did a refresher per your request… We did not ever to my knowledge use civics tests. We used literacy tests and what made them particularly offensive was they had various exemptions for white people or simplified variants for white people.
I am very icy to the idea of tests in general due to the effects having a “test” to vote could have. However, having a very low bar test of some sort administered without exceptions … it might make sense.
We don’t let people drive whose eyes fail a safety test. Maybe we shouldn’t let people vote if they don’t even have a surface level understanding of what they’re voting for.
I’m not saying do it, but maybe we shouldn’t totally write it off because of some bad behavior without any safeguards to prevent bad behavior.
If I could wave a wand and fix something about voting in the US, it would be to improve access for already qualified voters.
Kids would vote similarly to their parents in general, so lowering the age means people from groups/locations that have good access would have more votes (not a bad thing) but groups/locations with poor access would still have poor access, possibly even worse access because of the increase in voters. So yeah, fix access first or it only exacerbates what I consider to be a larger issue in need of addressing.
Assuming good access to voting though, 18 makes sense to me as the time a person is an adult and legally responsible for themselves. I would be open to arguments for younger, it’s just not something I ever felt passionate about, even when I was under 18 years old.
Just like women vote the same as their husbands? We’ll practically double the line length at the polls if we give women the vote, and their votes won’t really matter, because it’s the same as if their husbands or fathers just voted normally. Not worth the effort.
Not being an ass, it’s just that every single argument I’ve ever seen against lowering the voting age has been almost identical to the arguments used against women voters back in the day. I’m not suggesting you’re against women having the vote, just that the arguments are similar, and pointing that out helps to demonstrate why they might not as strong as some would think. Teenagers are also notoriously capable of disagreeing with their parents on political issues. It’s sort of a thing with them often enough.
Totally agree about access to voting. Automatic registration at 16, coting day a national holiday, polls should be open for at least a month, with every post office a polling place, and government run bussing to and from polling places, and mandatory paid time off for wt least 1 day in that month. Universal suffrage. Including incarcerated people. Honestly, nothing should be able to interfere with your right to vote. I go back and forth on compulsory voting, but tend to lean towards it. And this is coming from an Anarcho communist, who doesn’t generally believe we’re ever going to fix things through the ballot box.
No one’s fighting for teens to be recognized as adults at 16, and they will all have the right to vote in two more years, so I don’t see the parallel at all to the women’s suffragist movement who couldn’t ever expect to vote, married or not, and were part of a broader campaign for women’s rights. If there was momentum to make 16 the age of legal adulthood, it would make sense that voting would be a part of it.
16 is arbitrary. Not linked to any legal status. Not linked to the age at which one can work and pay taxes. Not linked to any milestone being identified. Like I said, open to arguments but it needs to be better than “younger than 18, set it at an aesthetically pleasing number… 16 will do.”
The most convincing arguments I see are about being able to vote for the president who could draft you, so theoretically voting at 14. But my preferred condition, and where I would throw any activist energy, would be to get rid of the draft entirely.
I’m also against compulsory voting. Absolutely against it in current state with all the access issues we’ve agreed upon. Even with perfect access though, declining to vote can be a political statement in itself.
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.
