I offer the simple proposition that lowering the voting age to 16 will be good for our democracy, good for young people, good for our communities, and good for our nation. I propose we amend the Minnesota constitution to change the voting age.
`I offer the simple proposition that lowering the voting age to 16 will be good for our democracy, good for young people, good for our communities, and good for our nation. I propose we amend the Minnesota constitution to change the voting age. I offer two possibilities. The first is to simply lower the voting age to 16 for state and local elections. The second option is a tiered voting system which would allow citizens to vote at the age of 16 in local elections, at 17 in statewide races and continue to be 18 for federal elections. You might think of this as a graduated franchise, the idea being similar to graduated drivers license systems that allow youth to earn their right to drive in stages. I prefer the first option for its simplicity and straight forwardness, but offer the second as an alternative that may be more acceptable to folks who have doubts about young people’s ability to be responsible voters. I give three principal reasons to support this change: to promote increased civic involvement, to support youth in their struggle for generational equity in social investment, and to enlist youth more fully into helping to address and overcome the myriad challenges we face in and as community and thus empower and engage youth to be forces for broad social change.
Academics, business leaders, pundits, and politicians from across the political spectrum have been increasingly concerned over the last decade or so about a decline in civic involvement. Robert Putnam’s phrase "Bowling Alone" captures the sense of increased civic isolation that characterizes life for many today. We are working more and finding less time to devote to civic matters, to voluntary association in the public interest. Suggested approaches to increasing civic engagement include having more students take civics classes and requiring students to participate in service learning. I think these are both fine ideas, but lowering the voting age would support and magnify the impact of civic classes and service. Enlarging the franchise would be a powerful way to increase youth civic engagement, but could also give added impetus to people of all ages engaging more fully in civic and public affairs.
The 20th century saw progress in addressing poverty. We have been particularly successful in diminishing poverty among the elderly. Social Security and Medicare have made a tremendous difference in how old age is experienced, most notably for those in the bottom quartile of income. However, this success in reducing poverty among the elderly has not been accompanied by as much success with reducing poverty among the young. Children are the fastest growing population of the poor today, and they will disproportionately bear the burden of paying for the very programs that have helped to diminish want among the elderly. As the demographic bulge of the baby boom works its way inexorably toward retirement, the ratio of tax payers to pensioners is worsening. There simply are not enough wage earners to support our elderly. This, combined with the astounding levels of public debt we are piling up, has created a situation of intergenerational inequity that is unprecedented. Youth of today will inherit a world where almost all public resources are absorbed in paying for the care of the elderly and paying off these prior generations’ debts, leaving very few resources to address other social needs.
Young people don’t have political power. They rely on their elders to represent their interests by proxy. We have been poor stewards of their interests. We have lived beyond our means. We have squandered great riches and despoiled our planetary home. We can’t seem to stop ourselves. Allowing younger voting is one way to address this imbalance of power. I believe it is a simple matter of justice. Youth deserve to really participate in public matters, matters that affect them profoundly. Voting is real participation.
Expanding the franchise has been successful in the past at drawing broader segments of the population into civic life and the life of our democracy. Our nation and civic fabric are richer and stronger for this expansion. I believe this will also be true for further expanding the franchise by lowering the voting age. While there is obviously a limit to how far we can lower the voting age, I am confident that 16 year olds can be responsible voters. There is always a risk that some young person might make a joke of it and vote frivolously, but I believe the vast majority of youth who would actually bother to vote would take it seriously.
Though I don’t really foresee youth participation substantively changing electoral outcomes in the short run, I do believe their participation could eventually have great impact. Candidates would likely feel compelled to address youth issues and issues that affect youth more directly, more comprehensively, and with perhaps a longer time horizon than they would otherwise. Youth participation could influence candidate recruitment and selection. An expanding cohort of young, hopefully enthusiastic, voters could inspire older voters to become more involved. God knows we need adults to take our politics and our governance more seriously.
Once engaged politically and civically, youth may well become more engaged academically. Being positively engaged in civic, political and academic life, they will be much less likely to have time, interest or the inclination to engage in all manner of negative behavior. Crime, teen pregnancy, drug use, go down. Grades and property values go up. Public costs associated with delinquency and crime are reduced. College enrollment goes up. Our state’s social and human capitol go up. It will be good for youth, good for our community, good for us.
The question of whether 16 year olds can be responsible enough to vote is a legitimate one. I believe strongly that they can and would be responsible voters. We allow 16 year olds to drive automobiles. I think that takes as much or more maturity as voting. We also allow 16 year olds to make their own decisions about having sex or dropping out of school. These are very serious responsibilities and, that we grant these at 16, is evidence that as a society we recognize that 16 year olds have the capacity to make important decisions. I have not yet seen evidence that makes me question whether 16 year olds have the ability to think well enough to be responsible voters.
This brings up one of my beliefs about why being allowed to vote at 16 could have such a positive impact in young people’s lives. According to Norman Sprinthal, experiences where youth are allowed to make substantive decisions that impact other people’s lives can be some of the most powerful learning experiences. Voting could be an effective learning experience for youth.
I believe many youth are alienated from society. Non-white youth, youth of color, are even more likely to feel alienated and in fact may be seen as systematically marginalized and criminalized in order to lessen the competition for a diminishing supply of good jobs in our economy. The privileged community, the white community at the very least, does not act effectively to change this out of perceived self-interest, but such interest is short term at best. As Paul Wellstone said, "We are all better off when we are all better off." As a society we desperately need all our young people to be successful. We cannot afford to loose the productivity, creativity, energy, and hope/dreams of any of our young people, if we are to meet the daunting challenges of the 21st century. I think lowering the voting age will have a particularly positive effect on youth in communities of color.
Fragmentation of service for youth is emerging as a significant barrier to successfully creating a coherent, accessible, effective system of supports and opportunities for young people, Advocates for young people have been unsuccessful for decades in creating meaningful reform in this area. Lowering the voting age and empowering young people to be effective advocates on their own behalf is a way to create the political will to take on the massive transformational task that it will really take to diminish this fragmentation and create a seamless system of supports and opportunities for young people.
Minnesota is not the only place where efforts are underway to lower the voting age. There have been efforts in several other states to lower the voting age, though none has been successful yet. There are strong efforts in Canada and England, and Austria has already succeeded. One can now vote at 16 in Austrian national elections!
The positive youth development perspective views young people as capable, as assets to our communities, not as problems to be remediated. While I have some unease about the development part of positive youth development (I believe the developmental model implies a more mechanistic step by step orderly process than actually obtains) I am completely sold on the positive part. I believe youth are built for success. I believe four million years of hominid evolution has made them so. As a society we face daunting problems and we need all hands on deck to deal with them. We can ill afford to squander the passion, the energy, the hope and the imagination of our young people. We need their help, their engagement, their full participation in our community, our endeavor of self-government, if we are to succeed
I'd love to hear what folks think about this.