meepa

I was talking to a friend about turning the voting age down to 16 years old instead of 18. Not that I was necessarily advocating it, but just for the sake of discussion I was trying to make a case.

The biggest reason that I figured lowering the age to 16 would be even considered a good idea would be to try and instill a stronger sense of voting responsibility while kids are still young. Most public schools usually have a US government class which is supposed to give a sense of civic duty, but I don't think it ever did much of anything except give kids a general idea of what each branch of the gov't did. By the time highschoolers turn 18, they are already overwhelmed by cynicism, apathy, and ignorance about their country's politics. Stack that on top of everything else a normal 18-year-old worries about, and taking the time to find some church of firestation just to vote doesn't sound appealing.

So what we were discussing is that if the voting age was 16, schools could hypothetically have way more specified (mandatory) classes about voting responsibility. Hopefully they would teach looking at issues and not party lines, being able to sift through political lip-service and propaganda, and avoiding peer pressure to vote a certain way either from their friends or their family. Along with this, the schools could also become official voting locations, and so on election day they could have a system to allow students that wanted to vote (obviously not forcing them to) to do so on campus where it was easy, convenient, and encouraged. The basic idea is to teach young people how to vote responsibly and get them in the habit of voting while they're still young and hope that that attitude carries over for when they leave for college/work/whatever.

The biggest problem with this, of course, is asking whether or not 16/17 year olds, even if they do take classes to be educated on the subject, are mature enough to vote intelligently. Most kids that age are more concerned with who they have a crush on, their chemistry homework, sports practice, and friends than about who their mayor is. Also, young people are one of the easiest groups to succumb to peer pressure and political spin. A big fear would be that their parents would put a lot of pressure for them to vote the same way they do. You can imagine all the ways a 16 year old can be easily swayed to think one way or another when they haven't developed their anti-bullshit skills fully yet. There are numerous other problems too, like on voting day, many students might not care about the process despite the education they receive, so they just vote for "whoever" or vote for obscure candidates just because they can. At any rate, there are lots of problems one can easily point out.

But one way to counter these arguments is that even though some 16/17 year-olds may not be mature enough to vote responsibly... There is probably a vast majority of eligible voters in the country that are already legally voting like idiots (such as only voting on party lines, falling for cheap propaganda tricks by either party, voting without understanding what the issues are, etc). So is it worth introducing the potential for a bunch of garbage votes in exchange for the potential to instill a habit of voting in young people? If it was easy and encouraged for students to vote at 16, that means they would have 2-3 very accessible voting terms to get into the voting process while in high school. Even if the plan only worked for 1/3 or 1/2 of the students, at least that is that many more voters who are going off to work/college after high school that are at least slightly more educated and enthusiastic about voting.

Anyway, I apologize this wasn't written as eloquently as it could have been. I just thought it was an interesting topic and I invite any other opinions for/against this for the sake of conversation. I think it is more interesting than

Poster 1: BUSH SUCKS!
Poster 2: SHUT UP HIPPY!
Poster 3: $*&#!!!
Poster 4: #*&@!!!
ad infinitum