I think they should be able to vote. I don't, however, believe that they should be able to run for office. The US President is a Dementia patient and shits his pants while sleeping through meetings. There needs to be standards for who can control the nuclear arsenal. If you can't serve in the military, you sure as hell shouldn't be able to control it.
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
41 points (74.7% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
9432 readers
584 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Who decides how old is "too old?" And what happens when the people approaching that age decide that young people (18-30) are the real problem and remove rights from them in retaliation?
This is the sort of thing that people shout in anger into the mirror at night, but any actual plans fall apart immediately.
Never give your political allies a power (in this case, removal of voting rights) you wouldn't also give your political opponents. Your "side" won't always be in charge, and what sounded good to yourself may be terrifying when wielded against you.
I think the average life expectancy age is a good point. It would encourage people to work to increase life expectancy because it widens the voter base. It would mirror the exclusion of younger peoplefrom the voting process too.
Restricting is hardly ever a solution for anything. You might have an 80+ better informed than a 30/40. What about people with mental issues, even if temporary (like depression) ? Sure you could have a system to validate who is "apt" to vote, but that system and the people who enforce it can be rigged. The better option (not that it's easy or even feasible) is to flip the issue around and try to provide good, impartial information to everyone.
↑↑↑
The median age of people 18+ in the US (total potential voters), is 47. The 80+ demographic is really small. If those folks are voting in ways that are detrimental to others, the solution is to increase voting among other groups.
Make election day a mandatory holiday for anyone outside first responders, and guarantee those folks a half day. Expand mail-in voting. Expand early voting.
There are dozens of solutions that don't include telling people they don't get all the rights of full citizens.
You can provide the information but people aren't obligated to consume it. Most won't, because they either have already made up their mind or they simply don't care. They're swayed more by a loud voice saying what they like to hear than the reality of complex issues. And you can't force them to care.
Yeah i actually agree on this being the best solution though that means that minimum vote age should be decreased because for the same way of thinking, there are many 16 years old who are better informed than 30 years old people
Actually, my issue is just the incoherence of all this fluff which is what prompted me to make this (stupid) unpopular opinion
Not saying what we have is perfect, but its probably as good as its going to get. Its quite coherent actually, as soon as you are a legal adult, you can vote and that right can't (in theory) be taken away from you. Even as it is, evil people try to find all types of way to dissuade, invalidate and suppress voting. I actually think the majority of people wants the best for everyone, that's why there is all this effort to remove as much votes as possible. Restricting by age would would add to that.
Restricting is hardly ever a solution for anything. You might have an 80+ better informed than a 30/40
...and it gets even worse down the numbers. 16 year olds have the strongest wishes and opinions based on the biggest nothingness
See, I just can't agree with this one. My grandma lived to be 103 years old. She never lost her mentality. She lost some physical functions. She was very hard of hearing. She was nearly blind, but she was still mentally sharp.
Can't pick and choose democracy. The moment you create an în group and an out group, the in group will happily start ignoring the best interests of the out group. It's Winston Churchill who said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others, and I tend to agree, at least when it comes to historical forms of government.
Whether a dual party system with willfully obscure candidate selection processes and politically drawn district maps actually fits the definition of democracy, that's a whole different discussion.
So we should allow teenagers and prisioners to vote then, we already have a ton of out groups.
Absolutely. If a teenager takes enough of an interest to go vote, let them.
As for the prison population, as long as losing the right to vote is not par of the sentence, I have no problem with that either. For most people there's an expectation of getting back into society at some point, so why not let them have a say in it?
The same can be said in the opposite direction. Young people are too distant to older people reality 🤷♂️ So, no vote for young people? And white people are too distant to non-white people reality, so are they also out? And men are too distant to women's reality. And ...
Where we draw the line?
We already don't let young people vote. That's why the voting age is 18.
Those that can't vote tend to be the most oppressed.
What's your cutoff for too old? Is an 80yo in good shape who could reach 100 too far gone? What about terminal cancer patients?
My line of thought was more "older people are usually more deattached from reality than younger people due to old age's deterioration and generally they stick with old ideals" rather than "they are about to die so they will not care about what happens next"
On two feets i'd say that 80 is the perfect cut off, though it would take further research to determine a better age cut off, this also should answer the question about cancer terminal patients (and if it's not too obvious: they can still vote)
You're making it very easy to tell you're extremely young.
If your criteria is detachment from reality then the younger generations should be banned for using tiktok etc. People with dementia shouldnt vote.
Yeah basically, it would get shitty pretty fast tbf due to it being easy to rigg, that's why that opinion is overall very bad
Over here we can't even keep them out of office.
Correct premise, wrong conclusion.
Premise: why are some people allowed to vote and not others?
Solution: let children vote. They're part of society. They can read. Encourage them to follow important news.
How far should we go? Debatable, but personally I would say start allowing people to vote from their 12th birthday and then consider if it is reasonable to go even younger.
If you let children vote, they will be even more the target of propaganda and brainwashing. Let people enjoy their childhoods free from that burden and responsibility, they will have their share for the rest of their lives.
But what happens when the definition of "free from burden" is decided by a political class that explicitly does not represent kids?
Think of brain-dead policies like the digital age verification thing, lack of gun control in the US and so on.
Like it or not, politics affects EVERY SINGLE member of society, kids included. The question is who has political control and who doesn't.
If I'm being affected by politics, I should have control over it. I held this opinion right since I was a child.
All these arguments used against children were once used against women.
"They are feeble minded. We are protecting them by not placing undue burden on them. No need to worry yourself with how society functions. Off you go to play with your shiny trinkets."
All these wise adult men are already fools for propoganda, are ill-informed, vote against their own interests, etc.
Edit: i now realized that childrens are actually more effected by propaganda which is a huge problematic in this idea
Pre-Edit text: I think 14th is better due to the fact that when you start to be a teenager you are less influenced by parents, doing it too early could actually empower people that decide to birth children by influencing the vote
Strong agree! BUT, education for the same has to be robust. Critical thinking skills, cognitive biases, logical fallacies, propaganda resistance, etc. must be hammered into kids in school.
I would go ahead and say that competency tests must be required too (made maybe by a supermajority of a committee appointed through sortition?).
I'm sorry, but I live in the modern day, and I can't get onboard with any plan that can be described as:
from their 12th birthday and then consider if it is reasonable to go even younger.
Noooooope! Just got the heebie jeebies reading that.
Think of it like this: voting is like bodily autonomy.
While it's reasonable to not demand newborns give verbal consent before being picked up and fed, a twelve year old is definitely grown up enough to be listened to when they say "no, don't touch me."
Vote? Hell no.
Enact policy, hold office? Hell yes.
Yeah i agree, old politicians don't do any good
(To be clear: i don't agree with the idea on the post, i just pooped it while thinking about stuff)
Which is why competency based voting > age based voting. Age can be an easy approximation for competency, but creates issues like the above.
THAT BEING SAID, implementing competency based voting on a large scale can be very very dangerous if not done with the utmost care (in its design). Who writes the competency tests? What should be part of the tests? How do we make sure that the competency tests are not used as a proxy to keep out certain groups of society?
At the same time, I'm all for youth liberation. In the current political systems of the world, the youth are represented by their parents/elders only, which is a horrible horrible mode of representation.
A competency test is just the start of the end of a democracy tbh, it means that someone can influence political decisions by making a specific political idea "incompetent"
Both age and competency limitations are very stupid ideas
A competency test is just the start of the end of a democracy tbh,
Not inherently
someone can influence political decisions by making a specific political idea "incompetent"
Correct, which is the biggest issue and why it's very dangerous to implement in practice.
That being said, there is nothing inherently wrong with competency tests. We have competency tests for driving, practicing medicine, law and so on. Why? Because we don't want incompetent individuals with the power to cause a lot of damage.
Through voting, millions can be stripped off health coverage. Wars can be started. The power to vote can create or destroy entire civilizations.
A basic competency test for:
- ensuring that the voter understands the structure of governance
- can identify logical fallacies
- can identify cognitive biases
would help reduce the probability of disaster imo.
The question of "the test setter can act in bad faith" can be remedied through independent sortition based committees requiring a supermajority approval for the test. I mean I can't see how designing such a structure in theory could be that difficult.
While youth demographics are so often the smallest in turn out in most western elections... maybe step up first.
This is not unpopular
Nope, I agree.
pretty sure that whole "voting" ship has sailed... i hope i'm wrong--we'll know from the mid-terms coming up. but GOP is not even trying to hide the cheating, voter suppression, voter intimidation, pretty much everything they can possibly do to hijack the election, and very little is being done to stop it. and even if the best case scenario happens, blue wave, dem control 2 branches (lol fat chance), they will continue to do very little, if anything, to stop trump from doing whatever tf he wants
he illegally put the country at war without even asking congress (after campaigning on "no more forever wars," mind you), and no one's done jack shit. it was fun while it lasted, but the great american experiment is over. we (as in non-billionaires) are fucked
Did you wrote in the wrong post accidentally?
popular for everyone under the age of I dunno. 75. just like not allow 17 year olds to vote is not popular with people over 17. also stupid people should not be able to vote and we should have like a test to see if you can vote and maybe voters should show they are earnest by paying like a pole tax. yeah. yeah. anyway up vote.
People over 80 should receive financial compensation for losing their voting rights then.
Downvoted because I agree.
I'm sick of boomer fucks voting to fuck over young people, again and again.