If the voting age were suddenly lowered to 16, I wouldn’t have a big problem with it. I also don’t think that it would radically change the tenor or the quality of our political discourse very much, either for better or for worse.
I teach United States history in the California State University system, where all students, no matter what their major, are required to take courses in United States history and government. I’ve seen students like the ones described in the OP: smart, engaged, and with a strong sense of civic responsibility. I’ve also seen students who have managed to complete 13 years of school without knowing (or caring) how many senators each state has. I’ve seen students who can’t name their own elected representatives at any level of government. I’ve seen students who can repeat the words “checks and balances” when you ask them about the federal government, because it’s a term they remember from their Grade 10 civics class, but who can’t explain what that term actually means or why it might be important.
But this is not, as others have noted, just a problem of youth.
Now that we’re set to evict the worst President in history from the White House, I have begun preparing, after 20 years in the United States, to apply for citizenship. I procrastinated while Obama was President, and there’s no way I was going to take my oath under Trump’s picture. I downloaded the recently-revised set of questions for the citizenship test the other day, and I’d be willing to bet that a substantial portion of the adult population of the United States could not get more than 50 percent of the 128 questions correct.
Hell, the people who wrote the questions couldn’t even get them all correct. For example, I was surprised to learn from the citizenship test that, as a legal permanent resident, I am not actually represented by my Senators or by my Representative. Apparently, those people only represent “the citizens” in their states or districts. That was news to me, and to quite a lot of legal scholars.
I was also impressed that the founders had discovered time travel. One question asks the citizenship applicant to name a document that influenced the United States Constitution. Two of the possible correct answers listed are the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. I am still wondering how a group of documents written AFTER the Constitution was completed and circulated could possibly have influenced the Constitution. I guess, at a stretch, you could argue that the debates over ratification led to the addition of the Bill of Rights, which then became a part of the Constitution, but I don’t think this is what they were getting at.
When you get asked about the rights of Americans, freedom of speech and religion, and the right to own guns, are on the list of acceptable responses, but not listed as correct answers for that question are the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, nor the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, nor the right of due process, nor the right not to have property taken without just compensation.