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Originally Posted by adysav
Have you heard the saying "with rights come responsiblities"?
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So what? We should let the irresponsibility of a few million people affect the responsible? I disagree.
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Felons knowingly waver their rights when they commit a crime, that is their choice.
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The felon = disenfranchisement issue has been discussed in a seperate thread. I still see no correlation between the two issues other than "they should know better", which doesn't mean anything at all - we could penalize them by cutting off their legs and still be able to say "they should have known better". Doesn't make cutting off their legs the correct thing to do. The reason I brought it up here is because we have created laws which limit this so-called "right" of voting.
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People under 18 are essentially unaffected directly by the outcome of elections as they are dependent upon another person. They essentially have very little responsibility. Young people are not denied rights and responsibilities because they haven't proven themselves, but because they are mentally and physically underdeveloped.
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This is such an arbitrary justification. We can determine that everyone under the age of 18 is mentally and physically underdeveloped? And what about the people over that age who are mentally and physically underdeveloped? They have the automatic right to vote. And how do we determine that a group of people are unaffected by the vote and should therefore not have it? Children are directly affected by the vote in the ways that their guardians are affected by the vote. It is entirely false to claim ANYONE is unaffected by the vote. So we're left with the arbitrary age determination of ability to have the judgement deemed necessary to make a choice in a vote. Why not change that to something far less generalized and require a basic test? This would be far more accurate in determining who is and who is not mentally and physically developed, but more importantly, it would determine who has the actual knowledge of the basic issues that their actions are affecting by partaking in the vote process.