It seems to me that the law makes a very clear distinction between someone who is 17.999 and someone who is 18. Not only in terms of contracts, but in lots of things. Minors are often (and rightly) shielded from the consequences of their actions in ways that adults are not. Minors are protected from exploitation in ways adults are not.
That distinction is a very useful line for the voting age, in my opinion. Certainly we agree that there should be some minimum age for suffrage. What is the fundamental difference between 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17?
More clearly: There’s not much difference between 13 and 14, or between 17 and 18, or between 20 and 21. For that matter, there’s even less difference between 64 and 65. But we have to draw a line somewhere.
People in one area and era will choose to put that dividing line at one age, and another area or era will choose a different one. This is all quite legitimate. My peeve is with those who make a big deal out of the magical turnover between N.999 and N+1. In theory there is no real difference, but in practice there has to be.
Although it’s severely limited, persons under 18yo do have some ability to contract. Depending on the state they can:
Drive a car
Consent to medical procedures
Purchase medical insurance
Get married
Open a bank account
They can also:
Be emancipated from their parents
Own firearms (long guns)
Be tried as an adult for certain crimes
A 16yo can vote in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Malta, Nicaragua, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey
Honestly? I think that would be a good idea in theory, if it could be done in an equitable and fair fashion. Voting is one of the most important things we do, and a whole lot of people take it for granted, and basically either view it as a chore, or as a way to protest against some aspect of the status quo in some reason. Few view it as something that people in our own nation’s history and people in foreign countries are willing to die for. I think we kind of need something to reinforce the notion that this is more important than someone’s identity as a conservative, or their lock-in on one ethnic group or issue. Sometimes the best candidates are not from your chosen party, after all.
My thinking about 16 year olds and voting is that they’re still minors, and voting, being drafted, entering into contracts, etc… are all things reserved for adults. Even driving and working is still highly regulated for 16 year olds. Why should the franchise, one of the very most important things adults can engage in within our country be any different?
Really? Unless they’ve made it significantly more complicated than it used to be, it’s pretty trivial, although it takes a minimum of effort. I voted absentee in my first presidential election (Bush Sr. vs. Clinton) when I was in college.
Here in CA we just had a proposition on the ballot, Proposition 18: Proposition 18 would have allowed 17-year-olds who will be 18 at the time of the next general election to vote in primary elections and special elections.
It was defeated 52% to 45%.
IMHO voters on the younger end of the spectrum, especially younger than 18, may tend to vote along the lines of their parents, if they have not developed their own positions yet. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but not sure how much lowering to 16 would benefit anyone, and who would benefit? Why not lower the age to 14? 13? 10? Where do you draw the line, and why? Why was 18 selected as the standard voter age?
I live in L.A. Proposition 18 should have passed in CA. I voted for it. The jerkoffs from the Howard Jarvis anti-tax lobby railed heavily against young people voting, claiming that they are too idealistic and would be too willing to vote for tax increases. What garbage. I think in this new age of the internet and massive amounts of available information, teens would be less likely to vote similarly to their parents compared to how earlier generations would have voted. Actually, the voting age in the U.S. used to be 21, until the Vietnam generation rightfully blasted the fact that numerous 18-20 year olds were dying in Vietnam, sent there by politicians who they couldn’t vote for or against.
Personally, I think that anyone should be allowed to vote who is capable of expressing the desire to do so and to fill out the ballot without supervision. A precocious kindergartner wants to vote? Let them. By adult standards, they’re likely to vote randomly, or like their parents, but that’ll balance out on both sides. But the advantages in engagement are worth it, especially since the young are the ones who will have to deal the most with the consequences of voting.
In any event, though, it’d make very little difference. 18 to 21-year-olds already have a very low voting rate, and I don’t see any reason to expect it’d be any higher for younger eligible voters.
I don’t know, as it wasn’t really relevant to the point I was making. They are required to take a course in history or government at the university, but I’m not sure exactly when, in their K-12 education, the students study government.
I don’t know about other states, but here, you have to contact your county clerk’s office for an application, fill it out in the presence of a notary public, mail it or hand-deliver it back to the county clerk’s office in time for them to send you a ballot, and then fill out the ballot itself, again in the presence of a notary public. It’s a non-trivial series of steps that requires some planning, especially if you’re eighteen years old and have no idea what a notary public is or how to find one. I know for a fact that I’ve had students in the past who weren’t able to vote because they hadn’t realized they need to start the process weeks in advance – and these were bright, civically engaged students who wanted to vote.
Anecdotally, my 70+ year old parents are far less informed, and as retired people who mostly stay at home, they have far less stake in national politics than my 15-19 year old nieces and nephews.
My primary argument for allowing teenagers to vote is that it can be directly incorporated into high school civics curriculum. Make each student study the issues, study the active and/or recent campaigns, make registering to vote part of their homework. My recollection of civics/government classes was that it was highly historical and abstract. Little was tailored to the minutiae of how your local state administers it and close to zero time was spent on local and state politics/elections/governance. This would go a long ways to making voting something that more people between the ages of 16-29 take seriously. If done well, it could even teach them how to debate and engage in activism more honestly and productively, something that seems to be degrading at an alarming rate.
The argument that 16 and 17 year olds, who we trust to drive cars, own long guns, hold jobs, choose colleges/careers, and in some cases even emancipate themselves, can’t be trusted to make a reasoned decision about a vote borders on absurd. They are certainly no more likely to be reactionary than an adult. Older people bias to the status quo, younger towards progressive ideals which in aggregate will be a balancing effect.
I would have voted for it too, but what do you mean “should”? About 9.5 million people voted against it, and about 7.5 million voted for it. The Howard Jarvis people are dicks, and I would have been happy if the proposition passed, but it didn’t, by a pretty comfortable margin.
There really wasn’t a “voting age in the U.S.” When the 26th Amendment was passed, there were already four states with voting ages lower than 21, and any other state could have passed a lower voting age if it wanted to. Georgia had lowered its voting age to 18 all the way back in 1943. States could do the same thing now; I’m not aware of any constitutional impediment to a state dropping its own voting age to 16.
I think this would be fine, but I’m already imagining the wailing and gnashing of teeth from people of all political stripes, but especially conservatives. “The teachers are all Democrats or socialists, and they’ll be indoctrinating the students to vote for the Democratic Party!”
Back when I last did it here in Texas, you just had to contact the County Clerk, and they’d send you an absentee ballot, which you filled out and sent back. There may have been an affidavit you had to sign, but no notary was involved at any stage.
I actually suspect that most 16 year-olds have a better knowledge of civics than most 35 year olds. What most people know about how their government works is based on vague memories from back in high school. With 16 year-olds this knowledge is at least more recent.
As far as impulsivity, I’m not quite sure what you have in mind. That the 16 year old is going to suddenly vote dangerously swerving around the ballot like a mad man and putting lives at risk? We just had an election where 70 million Americans voted for the greatest danger to Democracy in this nations history, most of those from the older “wiser” end of the spectrum. Its hard to see how 16 year olds could do worse. I suppose that there might be an unusually strong showing in Seymore Butts’ write-in campaign, but that isn’t going to affect the overall election.
In any case, so long as the younger crowd tends to vote Democratic, the Republicans will make sure that a move to lower the voting age will never see the light of day.
It’s not like it’s hard to correct the timing in the curriculum. This would obviously be a sea change for the country/state, so there’d be some structural changes that’d have to go with it. Plus if kids are in school, it may be tricky to you, know, vote on a random Tuesday. You’d have to adjust some things, this isn’t an argument against it. It’s just logistics.
Lots of non-city schools manage to squeeze in Drivers Ed during shortly before kids turn 16, I see no reason why tossing in a civics/government class should be any tougher.
As you say, most of these are contingent on restrictions which are no longer in effect once the person turns 18. In general, the law recognizes that an 18-year-old is a fully functioning member of society while a 17.999-year-old is not. Of course it’s an arbitrary number, but imo it’s better to have a bright-yet-arbitrary line rather than an equally arbitrary but muddled gradient of restrictions and protections as a minor transitions into an adult in the eyes of the law.
And since that line already exists, it’s a very convenient place to hang a hat. I think lowering the voting age would imply that, as a society, we agree that the protections and restrictions we afford to minors should end at 16 rather than 18.
My biggest concern with suffrage for minors is that voting would be very difficult for many of them, often for the same reasons voting is difficult for poor people.
Minors are highly unlikely to have a state-issued ID unless they have a drivers’ license. Many 16-year-olds do not have their license yet.
Minors would have great difficulty voting after school on election day. It’s a small window to leave school and then make it to their polling place, especially if they rely on a school bus which might take quite a long time to get them home.
So which minors are more likely to vote? The ones whose families have enough resources to pay for a drivers’ license when they’re only 16. The ones with enough resources to make it to the polling places. Same old song.
But since they’re the same problems we have now, more or less, we don’t need any crazily innovative fixes.
Make it easier to get a state ID. Schools already do yearbook photos and many schools already issue ID cards. Just give every student in a public high school a free state-issued ID.
Make it easier to vote by mail in states where it isn’t already easy.
Move election day to a weekend and also make it a federal holiday.
Make early voting easier, AND turn high schools into early voting polling places.
I have zero concerns about whether 16-year-olds would be poorly informed relative to adult voters. They’re captive audiences! One week of 50-minute presentations and discussions about the local ballot would make them better informed than most adults.
Honestly, if schools were able to turn voting into a positive production for the students we’d likely see a general uptick in participation even after they graduate.
