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Missouri teens want to lower the voting age to 16 in local and school elections
(news.stlpublicradio.org)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Politics
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Good for them; hope it works.
There is not a single argument against lowering the voting age that holds water.
Try it for yourself: think of any argument against it. "But what if they..." fill in the blank. And then realize old people already do that and we don't require them not to.
"They don't understand the issues!" MF'er, do you? "The Issues" is such a vague, broad, and nebulous term that you could use this to argue that anybody who can't reproduce your exact opinions on demand "doesn't understand the issues." And here's the thing: you're not required to. Old people can vote literally by throwing darts at a board and not be disenfranchised for it.
"They'll just vote for a celebrity." Young people didn't have the vote when Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse "the Body" Ventura, or Donald fucking Trump got elected to office. Hell, old people elected former actor Ronald Reagan and 40-odd years later we still haven't recovered from the damage he did to the country and probably never will.
"They'll vote for whoever is good-looking." Disregarding that literally nobody on earth is that shallow, young people didn't have the vote when Kennedy got elected.
"They'll vote for whoever their parents do." One would hope so; that's called "instilling values" and it's something most families strive for.
"They'll vote against whoever their parents do!" Disregarding that this is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" logical-fallacy-circlejerk... one would hope so; that's called "establishing your own identity" and it's something most people should strive for.
And on and on. Every argument against lowering or even abolishing the voting age is like this. Either its a non-issue being made to sound like a catastrophe, or its something that old people already do and we don't take away their rights for it.
I also like to draw analogies to other age restrictions. If they're allowed to drive a car, literally the most dangerous thing they can do in terms of causes of death, then how can they not be responsible enough to vote for their leaders?
We also have no qualms about sentencing 16 year olds as adults if they commit a bad enough crime. This one strikes me as society knowing 16 year olds are perfectly capable of being responsible but we just give them a bit more leeway.
And personally, I've met plenty of 16 year olds that are better informed about politics than a number of adults I know.
This. For all the bad votes young people may cast, I can hardly imagine them doing any worse than the adults have already done. I'm almost 40, and I am bitterly disappointed in my peers.
But let's be honest. The real objection to letting young people vote is that they might vote left-wing. Every other objection is just a dog whistle for that one.
I love how right-wingers make the argument that young people are too dumb to vote and only adults are smart enough, but when ranked-choice/approval/etc voting reform is the issue at hand, they make the exact opposite argument—that adults are too dumb to understand the new voting system!