The kids want to….
Adults , who where 16 black in the day?
Don’t want them to vote….
Then [50 years ago], liberal and conservative activists united behind a powerful argument that went back to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the draft age to 18: Young people were being conscripted to fight America’s wars but couldn’t vote in its elections.
Today, there is no similarly popular argument. Indeed, a recent poll found that 75 percent of registered voters opposed letting 17-year-olds vote, and 84 percent opposed it for 16-year-olds. In March, when Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts proposed a 16-year-old voting age amendment to House Democrats’ sweeping voting rights bill, it failed 126 to 305, with almost half of her fellow Democrats voting against it and only one Republican in support.
Opponents in both parties have expressed doubts that 16-year-olds are mature enough to vote. But local, youth-led campaigns to lower the voting age have persisted since at least 2013, when Takoma Park, Md., gave 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in municipal elections.
The New York Times recently spoke with activists from the movement 50 years ago, and people on different sides of the issue today, about the cause and the challenges of lowering the voting age.
I can’t say I favor this.
I mean you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
I guess you can argue that eighteen is arbitrary but it works for me.
He, he, he….
There ARTE some 16 year olds that are more in tune then adults…
I’d think there is little support for this…
They don’t have ‘ if I can be sent to war, I should be able to vote’ punch the 18 year olds had…
I’m rather doubtful myself. At 16, I was following politics very closely (with information from more than one side), but some of my views, conclusions and opinions would later seem unrealistic, dogmatic, or reactively opposed to the Conventional Wisdom.
On the other hand, while 50 years ago, unenfranchised 18-year, 19-year and 20-year-old males could be drafted and put in harm’s way, today’s 16 & 17-year-olds suffer dispropotionally from public threats such as opioids, school shootings and — potentially — limits on reproductive freedom.
Adults don’t G.A.S. about problems for teen agers these days….
When I was 14 and wanted to vote for my President, I gave some sort of speech in class about how the voting age should be lowered for those who could pass some sort of ultimate civics exam…
I had to wait though until I was 18 and so should everyone else now.