About two years ago now, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park writing my initial thoughts on what I didn’t know then but would come to know as Youth Rights.
I don’t think I’ll ever remember why she did, but about halfway through the day Greta Thunberg came to mind, and I looked up the voting age in Sweden. And my blood boiled in a way I’ve never experienced in my entire life.
16 years old and one of the most famous and recognizable political activists in the world. 16 years old giving a confident, impassioned, admonishing speech to the fucking UN. 16 years old with no legal right to a voice in her country. No voice to vote for the policies she believed in or the people who might enact them.
My writing, already vitriolic to a fault, managed to become even moreso but with the topic abruptly switched to voting. For the first time in my life, I considered where I’d place the voting age if I could do so unilaterally. Not long into considering it I had a thought that I wrote down immediately, a question I’ve asked well over 100 times at this point with no substantial answer:
When is it reasonable to say to a person, ‘If you’re not at least this old, then I don’t give a fuck what you think’?
And from the moment I had that thought, I have been unable to place the voting age.
Man, it’s a tough one.
In theory, nobody should be disenfranchised by age at all. But at what age would they be able to vote, as in understand what to do, how to do it, and do so without adult supervision?
Until they reach that point, it’s essentially their parents or guardians getting an extra vote.
And then you have to look at other things we limit minors on by virtue of not being able to make informed decisions. So, would we go with driving age, since that’s when we trust them with a ton of death machine? Drinking age? Age of consent for sex (which isn’t always 18)?
If we change it away from 18 to lower, showing that they have the full rights of any citizen, why don’t they get those other rights with enfranchisement? Why is someone able to vote like someone that has the ability to make an informed choice, but they can’t drink? Hell, that’s already a problem since 18 year olds can be sent to fight and die in the military, but can’t have a beer legally.
I would be fine with 16 being the age of majority for everything if the individual wanted it. You wanna step into adult life, with all the rights and responsibilities, I don’t have an objection to that at 16. I had too many patients that were married and working before 18 to pretend that it isn’t realistic for someone that age to step into adulthood. I don’t think it’s the best choice, but I wouldn’t fight it if the world decided that way.
I could definitely made an informed decision for voting at 16. I had access to alcohol, and was able to make the decision to not use it, same with tobacco. I had access to sex, and made the decision to make it safe sex. I was a decent driver, and didn’t have even a fender bender until I was 19, and I wasn’t the one that caused it then. All of the stuff that we limit to “adults”, I know I would have been fully capable of making informed and conscientious decision about any of them.
But I also knew other teenagers that were absolute morons that couldn’t be trusted not to jerk off in the school bathroom. I knew 16 yos that wrecked cars and put other people’s lives at risk in the process. So I’m okay with the age of majority being 18 too; some of those morons would just flip a coin for their vote, and the mock votes we’d have in school were laughable across the board.
Not everyone can make an informed and conscientious decision at 30, much less 18.
So I don’t really think it needs to change, but I agree with you that it sucks that it’s so arbitrary.
Honestly I’ve sometimes thought that parents ought to be able to vote for their kids. At least that gives some form of representation to children.
In that regard, they already have representation by their parents’ votes. All it would achieve is giving parents outsized voting power.
which isn’t a bad thing either if you want to encourage people to have more kids (which of course is debatable whether that should be a goal, but many people think it should)
But that vote only counts as much as one person, so it doesn’t give any more representation to the child if you ask me. My whole point is that a parent should have outsized voting power because they represent two persons, not one (okay actually each parent would get 1.5 votes as the child’s vote would be split on each parent but my point is the same).
No, no citizen whatsoever should be able to cast the votes of other citizens, period.
If the kid can’t get in the voting booth by themselves, cast their own vote without assistance, then they aren’t voting, someone else is.
That’s ableist. Not every voter can can get in the booth by themselves.
Dude. You know what I’m talking about, don’t pretend otherwise
The idea is that the parent represents the child. We don’t trust children to make an informed vote, but we trust parents to make all kinds of choices for their children, including extremely personal choices. The current alternative is to not give children a vote at all. I think letting parents choose the vote for their child is better, and fits pretty well with all the rest that parents currently choose for their child. I also think it’s better than simply letting children of all ages vote, since again, they probably won’t be able to make an informed vote.
So, all I have to do is pump my semen into enough women, get them knocked up, and have thirty votes? Awesome! I’ll be my own bloc!
I mean… you can already kinda do that right? Raise your children to have similar values to you and they’ll vote like you when they grow up. That happens constantly. There’s just an 18 year latency to it. Obviously you lose the vote once they grow up to vote by themselves. I feel like you’re making a bit of a strawman out of what I’m saying here. We clearly just disagree and that’s okay.
It’s been a pleasant disagreement :)
That’s the kind of disagreement that is best.
Edit: also, my apologies. When I saw this earlier, I was on my phone and fat-fingered the down vote. I corrected that. Not that votes matter, but this far down a thread it can seem like disrespect.
We seem pretty well-aligned. Personally I think 16 is the absolute latest a person ought to have the liberty to do anything that we age restrict. I was talking to someone from Scotland recently where the Age of Majority is 16 and he said that it’s not uncommon there for 16yos to graduate their school system, marry their person, and start a family.
So to me that is at least some amount of evidence that if we simply perceived 16yos as adults, they would behave more like adults.
because that endangers others too
because alcohol negatively effects development
because teenagers have sex anyway; making it illegal would only be harmful