The Republicans have known for some time that their program only appeals to a minority of the voters. So one of their most effective tactics for continuing to squeeze out electoral victories had been to suppress and disenfranchise those voters deemed most likely to vote Democratic in an election. In the past this tactic has focused on racial minorities and the poor. Another demographic that seems to be breaking more reliably against the Republicans in recent years is the young. Can we help counter the Reoublicans' tactics by lowering the voting age by a significant account—say, to 15? And is it reasonable to think that people in that newly enfranchised age group would be mature enough to make responsible decisions when voting?
One of the right wing's most successful programs for disenfranchising large groups of people has been the War on Drugs. Not only in its ability to put potential voters behind bars for mostly non-violent and in many cases victimless crimes, but also because many states permanently revoke the rights of felons to vote even after they have served their sentences and been released. The ranks of those actually sentenced for drug crimes is disproportionately filled with the poor, especially blacks and Hispanics, while upper class whites and members of the media celebrity class often plea bargain their way to misdemeanor convictions with nominal community service or fines for punishment.
In addition, the "threat" of having a person with a past felony conviction be able to vote provides a rationale for voting officials to purge minority voters from the registration rolls due to name similarities with lists of felons provided by right wing-bankrolled private companies. The purged voters may not even find about this until they show up at the polls to vote.
Strict photo ID requirements for voters are another tool for discouraging the poor and the disabled from voting, as many don't drive, travel abroad or own firearms, and hence don't have even one of the most common forms of photo IDs that more prosperous citizens have. Getting to a government agency that might provide a photo ID, even if one can meet the documentation requirements, is also not so easy for a disabled person or someone working several jobs to try to make ends meet.
If the Republicans want to wage demographic war, one way to fight back would be to vastly expand the playing field by enfranchising potentially sympathetic voters faster than the Republicans can disenfranchise them. One demographic that the Republicans seem to be doing worse and worse with is the youth vote. So why not lower the voting age? As the diary title says, why not drop it all the way down to 15?
Many people might say that a 15 year old is too immature to vote responsibly, but in older agrarian societies 15 was probably a typical age at which one got married and moved out of one's parents' house. Even now most states entrust 15 year olds with a learner's permit to drive an automobile (and, lest we minimize the significance of that, remember that automobiles cause far more deaths each year than guns). At 16 one can usually get a full license to drive and can leave school if one so desires. Also, with the greater dietary calories and vitamins that most young people take in nowadays, kids are physically maturing much faster than they used to, such that a 15 year old now might be equivalent to a 16 or 17 year old in one of those older agrarian societies mentioned above.
The argument that this physical maturity is not accompanied by psychological/emotional maturity is no doubt true for some 15-17 year olds. One could go to the extremes that ancient Romans did and declare everyone under 30 a child and still find emotionally immature 30 and 40 year olds. (In Rome a parent could also starve their 25 year old "child" to death by walling them in their bedroom as punishment for shaming the family honor—so I'm not sure they provide a model we want to follow!)
Even back in the 1950s people like Paul Goodman were arguing that teen-agers were immature and wild precisely because they had reached an age where they were ready to take on adult responsibilities but society had decreed that they could not be responsible and must accept a role where nothing that they did was useful to their communities. (He offered this as part of a general critique of the loss of useful work in favor of white collar paper shuffling and other types of "busy work".)
In addition, it's often said we have to confine teen-agers to an extended childhood because the educational attainment needed to enter the work force is so much more rigorous nowadays. I find this unpersuasive (like all the cries to have our young people focus even more on education) because so many jobs requiring highly technical education have been outsourced to countries like China in spite of the large pool of unemployed people with the necessary education and talent that we already have in the US. And if one believes the Peak Oil theorists (I do, mostly), then there will soon be far more job opportunities in providing the basic necessities of life and far fewer providing glitzy consumer electronics and exorbitantly priced pharmaceuticals-in-search-of-a-disease. James Howard Kunstler foresees a vastly higher percentage of the population having to be involved in agricultural work in the coming decades—a lot like those older agrarian societies, as a matter of fact. Even if we accept the need for education in the subjects we emphasize now, it need not be delivered in the same way—because 8 hours a day in a classroom funded by town property taxes is not necessarily the optimal way to encourage learning, although it does provide a comprehensive baby-sitting service for harried working parents.
Almost all 15 year olds these days have passed through puberty and are physically mature. As a group, 15-17 year olds are still bright (not beaten down into apathy) and idealistic (not beaten down into cynicism) and often more skilled at using resources like the Internet than their parents and teachers. I have no doubt that they could do at least as good a job deciding who to vote for as most of their elders—and that they will be more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than their elders (especially those at the opposite end of the age spectrum). Give them the vote, I say.