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.
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IMO, it should be 16. It should be the earliest age that you can work in a traditional job, or begin service in one’s armed forces. Many right-wing people hate this idea because young people are very left-leaning, but it is unfair to expect someone to contribute to a society that bans them from having a say in its outcome.
The minimum age anyone can do any of these things:
- Pay taxes
- Hold a job
- Get married
- Sign a contract
- Join the military
I think that’s currently something like 12 in the US, which is a huge problem.
I think between 16 and 20 is acceptable, but I have one kid who turns 18 a week after the election. So will be almost 22 before they can vote in a presidential election. 19 or 20 before a local or state race.
So I think 16 makes more sense, because the national races being only every 4 years disenfranchises too many young people, everyone who is 15, 16, or 17 at this election won’t actually get to vote at 18.
16
if you can get taxed as a worker at 16 you get to vote.
This was my first thought, but then it occurred to me that if I was voting at 16, I’d almost certainly be voting for who my parents told me to. I’m still not against it but I think we’d need specialized education and tons of PSAs aimed at kids about it, because unless you’re already rebellious, “my house my rules” could easily be extended to voting.
20 - 55
Honestly I think everything should move to 20.
Alcohol purchase, consumption. Military conscription, draft, voluntary service Age of majority, marriageable age Voting with automatic voting registration Drug consumption including nicotine, caffeine, and cabinets Driving ( permits at a prior age with supervision )
We know people’s brains aren’t really formed enough even at 18 to consider people adults, this younger age is a hold over from even younger ages and doesn’t reflect reality.
People who are not fully developed shouldn’t be able to make decisions with the full weight of adulthood, to take any other position is barbaric.
We’re definitely not at the point that this brain development science should be affecting policy. Here’s an article from 2022 featuring commentary from several neuroscientists. And here are a couple important quotes:
“Some 8-year-old brains exhibited a greater ‘maturation index’ than some 25 year old brains,”
The interpretation of neuroimaging is the most difficult and contentious part; in a 2020 study, 70 different research teams analyzed the same data set and came away with wildly different conclusions.
And here is a different article written entirely by a neuroscientist and released earlier this year.
Aside from practical reasons like being able to read and write, I think the age to vote should be as low as possible.
People are concerned that parents will coerce their kids, but that would happen across the board. It would come out in the wash.
The most important thing is that folks are civically engaged as young as possible. They are invested in the outcome and exercise their rights early.
I would say a good starting point would be third grade. Right when you begin learning social studies.
But it wouldn’t come out in the wash. Crazy people would be incentivized to have even more kids to increase their vote. They already do it for “God’s will”, so why not do it for America?
People over 80 don’t have as much of a stake in the future. Maybe they should lose the vote?
I think rhe voting age should be the lower of the minimum age to labor or the age of potential conscription less the age of the longest-term official whoss job includes sending people to war.
In the USA, that would put the voting age all the way down to 12. And having both been 12 myself once and having close family who were recently 12, I’m entirely OK with that.
En verdad no tengo problemas con la edad para votar actual.
Estoy convencido, como alguien ya adulto que pasó por la adolescencia, de que los adolescentes no tienen idea de que es lo que quieren en la vida, son muy volubles y manipulables y no es hasta que llegan a la adultez que pueden empezar crearse una idea de cuáles son sus ideales politicos. Vamos, incluso los adultos no lo tienen muy claro hasta que están más cerca de los 30 que de los 20, pero aumentar la edad de votación hasta las 30 o más sacaría a muchos de votantes de la ecuación, la mayoría de ellos gente con ideas progresistas.
Los 18 quizá no sea ideal, pero es aceptable. Hablas de Greta, por lo que he leído recientemente ella a sus dieciocho ha madurado aún más sus ideas, dándose cuenta de que los problemas son más sistemático, algo de lo que quizá no era consciente a sus 16. En lo personal, hay un montón de cosas que no consideraba a mis 16 que no fue hasta mis 22, cuando pude votar por primera vez, que me di cuenta de ellas.
I live in a country where the voting age is 16. It used to be 18 and I don’t think this change has caused many concrete policy changes: young people aren’t big or unified enough a voting bloc to meaningfully affect the results.
I tend to be in favor of letting young people have more rights at a younger age in general (in part because I remember being young and not seeing any good reason why I shouldn’t), so I’m definitely not in favor of raising it to 18 again or further.
From an Australian perspective, my proposal is:
- Eligible to vote at 16.
- Compulsory voting at 18.
- A citizen’s vote has a weight of 100% until 20, then drops 5% at each birthday that ends with a 0.
The reason for the diminishing weight of a vote is to correlate with the diminished exposure political decisions will have on the citizen.
Strong agree with your first 2 points, stronger disagree with your last point. Do you seriously think a 40 year old doesn’t deserve a vote?
Yeah, 5 percent ≠ 5 percent points
Using the formula as written, anyone aged 40-49 would have a vote weighted at 85%. You’d have to make it to 210 years old to reach 0%.
Compulsory voting at 18.
HAHAHAHAHA
A citizen’s vote has a weight of 100% until 20, then drops 5% at each birthday that ends with a 0.
Oh my god you really must think age has more power than capital. Jesus hahahaha
Why you gotta be like this?
They’re probably in a bad percentile
Are you a citizen, bound by law, or pay taxes? Then you have a say in who makes them.
Same as the age you can work and pay taxes.
14 is typically the minimum age to have a job (in the US at least).
Then that’s the age we should be able to vote.
And if people don’t like it, maybe we outlaw child labor. 🤷♀️
It’s 12 in the US for agricultural jobs. That’s when I started corn detassling and tree trimming and filed my first taxes.
Don’t forget acting too. There are babies and toddlers acting and working for pay.
I was offered a job at a computer repair shop at age 14. Dude had to retract his offer when I told him my age, he assumed I was 17 or older.
Mississippi.
According to this it would have been legal to hire you. There’s a lot of restrictions when it comes to number of hours and time of day that minors are allowed to work though which is probably what they didn’t want to deal with.
Interesting. I’m not quite sure what the laws were back in 1996, but yeah with school and all, plus the travel distance of over 30 miles, even if it was legal for me to work a few hours a day after school, it wouldn’t have been practical at all.
Still nice that he offered the job, I was trying to brainstorm and troubleshoot why my first sound card didn’t work. Turned out he got a defective batch, like 3 other customers had the same issues.
He knew I did all the proper troubleshooting already. Honestly I forget what model sound card it was, but once I proved it didn’t work, he gave me a different card that cost twice as much, for no extra money.
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