Youth Rights - Suffrage

Great Debates
1

The 26th Amendment to the US Constitution reads:

While this amendment represented, at the time, an important recognition that citizens should not be subject to being drafted into a war by a government which was unaccountable to them, it largely ignores the larger issues involved with the existence of a voting age.

The United States government style is described as a representative democracy, and that says something about the nature of what it means to be granted the vote. The entire point of sending representatives to make decisions on our behalf rests on the idea that citizens aren’t able to spend the needed time to educate themselves on every issue of significance to them. So instead, they appoint someone who’s sole job is to become educated on these issues, and to make decisions in the place of the citizens who they are representing. The representative is intended to be someone who’s judgment the citizens trust, as that representative is, ideally, acting on what the citizen would be acting on had the citizen had the time to properly review an issue.

I felt it important to go over the basics of representative democracy because I feel it’s important to a common argument for why people under 18 ought to be denied the right to vote. The common argument is that people under 18 aren’t educated or informed enough to have sufficiently developed political opinions on the relevant issues of the day.

The problem with this reasoning, is that, as I outline above, the whole point of having a representative rather than a direct democracy is that we already assume the voters are uninformed. It is an implicit assumption written into our form of government. The governing system is explicitly designed to handle uninformed voters. That’s the whole point of it.

Another common argument for denying the vote to individuals under the age of 18 is that they are too strongly influenced by their parents, and this would effectively be giving parents more votes than the childfree, and parents of larger families more votes than those who have smaller families. On that front, I submit that the problem doesn’t exactly go away when someone crosses the magic age line.

Individuals under the age of 18 are subject to the laws of this country. They are required to pay taxes on any income earned, and they are punished by the legal system when they violate laws made by individuals they had no part in electing. This is an immoral state of affairs, and one rather important American war has been fought over the very issue of taxation and legal responsibility without representation.

The 26th amendment forbids states from denying people over 18 the right to vote, but that is a minimum standard. States are free to grant the vote to minors as they see fit.

Suffrage has taken a long, difficult road to reach its current levels, gradually including non-land-owners, blacks, women, but we’ve still got entire groups of people denied basic representation. The way our representative democracy is supposed to work, a person deserves the right to political representation once they’ve reached the point that they can articulate an opinion, and age should not be a factor.

Discuss:
-Lowering or Eliminating the Age requirements for voting
-Representative democracy, the requirements, and merits of that system of government

2

You need an age of majority/legal responsibility to be placed at some point, and it seems to me that 18 is as good a point as any. And, in a lot of way, making the voting age 18 makes sense. 18 is the age that people can enter into contracts, the age that men can be drafted, the age that people are considered able to give consent to sexual activity, the age that parental support ceases, and the age in which people are subject to the full force of the judicial system.

So, since we make 18 the age for all that, might as well make the voting age 18 too.

3

No, you really don’t.

So you are using one arbitrary age line based on nothing to justify another. That seems circular somehow.

4

What makes you think that kids have any interest in voting in the first place? Even now, young adults (18-35) comprise the lowest turnout rate of all voting groups.

Sure, age limits are inherently arbitrary. One could present the argument that 16yo’s should be allowed the right to vote, but if that’s the case, what about 14? 12? Eight? Four? You have to draw the line somewhere.

If children are genuinely interested in obtaining suffrage, they are more than welcome to form their own lobbyist group to campaign for voting rights comparable to adults. The fact that they have NOT done so should tell you something – as opposed to groups of adults who appear to have a hidden agenda in mind. :dubious:

5

Yes, you really do, because the alternatives to not having an arbitrary age line for legal responsibility are either that you don’t have any at all, in which case, I run around getting 8 year olds, who have a reputation for being notoriously bad negotiators who aren’t good at long term planning, to sign over large percentages of their future earnings to me for candy, or you decide that society will decide when somebody’s a legal adult on a case to case basis, which seems like it would be a lot of time and effort for everybody.

No, I’m saying that as long as we have an arbitrary age limit for other things, (and you didn’t challenge that in your OP), at least it’s consistent.

6

The alternatives are having no age limits, or the option Captain Amazing didn’t mention, which are eligiblity tests. Those are unconstitutional, and rightly so, because historically they were used to keep black people from voting.

I support lowering the voting age by a few years and I admit any kind of age based limit is going to be unfair to some people. Unfortunately it beats the alternatives.

7

This just isn’t true. The reasons we send representatives to Washington, or the state capitol for that matter, is because the vast majority of citizens cannot afford to take the time to go to Washington and cast their vote on an issue. If you’re in the business of shipping/receiving cargo in New England during the early 19th century you certainly can’t leave your business to go vote in Washington. So it makes sense to have a representative.

One of the things Alexis de Tocqueville notes in *Democracy in America

  • (1835) is that even common laborers were relatively well aware of political issues, and, in his opinion, they held too much sway in public discourse to the detriment of the country. Certainly during the period of history that led up to the American Revolution you can also find examples of common laborers with strong enough political opinions and awareness to form their own groups to affect change. Sons of Liberty I’m looking at you.

So, no, the only reason we have a representative democracy is not because citizens cannot be well educated to vote on issues.

There’s nothing immoral about it. For the most part minors are not responsible enough to enter into things like contracts, to decide whether or not they wish to go to school, and have limited control of things like their diet, bed time, and even the clothing they wear. In short, minors are dependent on their parents are are not emancipated individuals. In light of that there isn’t a reason to give minors the right to vote.

How about people who aren’t citizens? Do they get a vote too? They pay taxes and are subject to our laws.

Quite clearly that isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. I could articulate an opinion when I was 5 (I love Star Wars!) but it didn’t make me qualified to vote.

Odesio

8

I think that there needs to be a limit. If there were no limit, then a 5-year-old who could read and write could also vote, and I’ve never known of a 5-year-old who had any kind of political opinions. My youngest son, however, at the age of 12 asked an awkward question of the then Prime Minister of Australia when on a school trip to Canberra. (Though I must admit that his political opinions were strongly influenced by the political opinions of his family and our friends – our social circle included members of parliament and local councilors).

I’d support lowering the voting age to 16, because by then most people have learned about the political system, and have started forming their own opinions – which often will not be the same as their parents.

9

well on the age thing, I agree that the line is arbitrary and also that such a line is needed. But Captain Amazing is forgetting one area where this line is often brushed aside: prosecuting minors as adults.

I do not want this thread to focus on this issue, but if any minor would try to get voting rights with the argument that it is not consistent for the state to brush aside the arbitrary line when it suits them, but not when it doesn’t; I would feel he or she has a point.

10

There’s certainly a kind of double standard there, but even though minors can be prosecuted as adults, in most cases, minors aren’t. The vast majority of minors who commit crimes are processed through the juvenile judicial system.

11

I think we should have a basic civics class taught to all kids around ages 10-12, with voting rights granted afterwards. Like was said before, most younger adults don’t even bother to vote in the first place, so I don’t think that elections will be swayed by groups of easily influenced 14 year olds. I think there needs to be some basic concepts of rational, abstract thought that we would need before children could vote, but I would argue that by 12 or so most children would be capable of making these decisions.

‘18’ just works now because it happens to be the age of consent for many other things, but just because you could sign a legal contract at 18 doesn’t mean an 18 year-old could sign a contract with a bar allowing them to drink.

Yes, some children would probably be unduly influenced by their parents, but I’m sure that happens to children over 18 as well. Hell, my wife and I are in our mid twenties, but we still get voting ‘cheatsheets’ from her parents telling us the way we should be voting.

Most likely, the few children who actually cared would vote, and the rest would just ignore it. What harm would come of it?

12

I don’t think that, as a rule, teenagers, especially 12-14 year olds, are mature enough to be trusted with sufferage.

13

Why not have in place a system in which the default age is the age of majority, but where children under that age can apply for the franchise by passing a means test? (US constitutional considerations aside). That should resolve the “4 year olds voting for tax-funded candy” problem.

14

Whenever this subject comes up, I usually make a risque pun about Matthew 19:14, but considering the OP, I decided against it :slight_smile:

15

“To me”, not “in my hand”.

As far as the OP, no - we need a bright line, since eligibility tests are too much bother for so small a return. We could use “emancipated minor” for the rare exceptions. (And Marley23 makes an interesting point about the Constitution).

Regards,
Shodan

16

But why not? Surely there are people who voted in the last election based on nothing but the skin color of the candidates. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that they are making a mature decision with their suffrage right. What is it that makes people over 18 who make immature decisions allowed while those under aren’t allowed? And who is to say that they won’t make mature decisions on issues important to them anyways? Most people don’t understand federal economics at a deep level, but a lot of people vote with their wallets, based on what they perceive will help them.

17

Because as appealing as the idea is, your constitution apparently doesn’t allow you to prohibit someone from voting just because they’re an idiot.

18

I don’t think you’re mature enough to be trusted with suffrage either. :rolleyes:

What the hell is the big catastrophe that will happen when we grant true universal suffrage? Is it worse than Bush?

The fact is that legitimate government only works by consent of the governed, and we’re screwing an awful lot of people over at present.

19

Criminal prosecutions, however, are inherently case-by-case.

20

You mean kinda like Democrats could do if they want equal (To Rush and co) radio air time? Heh