One of the latest new terrible ideas out there is to lower the voting age to 16. As some states and cities are actually increasing the age for some things, such as buying tobacco products, Generation Citizen wants one of the most important privileges and responsibilities to be made available to 16 year olds.
The reasons include:
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- To “drive demand for better civic education in schools.”
- Because “voter turnout is a key measure of the health of a democracy, and current turnout in the United States is dismal.”
- Because of the 16 and 17 year olds who “work and pay taxes on their income, can drive in most states, and can in some cases be tried as adults in court.”
- Because “research shows” they’re “indeed ready to vote.”
Many of these reasons are just as bad as the idea itself, if not worse. To start with the first two, you do not fix a problem with this kind of a solution. It makes much more sense to have the civic education before we allow high school students to vote, lest we get more uninformed voters. And, of all the ways to fix the issue of a “dismal” voter turnout, simply increasing the base is not the most efficient one.
While many 16 and 17 year olds can drive, that’s one of the very few adult privileges they have. You have to be 18 to do a whole lot more, and many 16 and 17 year olds do not file their own taxes, and can only be tried as adults in court for certain cases. Jack Pitney highlights these points in writing against the proposal for the Christian Science Monitor.
Pickney also rebuts the last point. Despite the “research” Generation Citizen mentions, and the claim that “they have the mental reasoning ability necessary to make informed choices,” the teenage brain is not fully formed. Pickney cites the National Institute of Mental Health on this one.
While he does call it “a still a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea,” Pickney is too kind to the proposal, as he says they have “the best intentions.”
The piece also closes with this:
Not only is the anti-Trump comment unfunny, unnecessary, and irrelevant, it’s also wrong. A poll just released showed Millennials do not like Trump.
In all seriousness, there are better reasons for making teens wait until they have become adults in order to vote. And it need not have anything to do with Trump. At such an impressionable and still developing age, they’re known for making some pretty bad decisions. For better or worse, it’s the time for them to do so. Let’s not make who they vote for a part of that.
