Voting Age

[El Sitherino]

Originally posted by rccar328
A wacko legislator in CA wants to lower the voting age, giving 14-15 year old kids a quarter of a vote and 16-18 year old kids a half of a vote.

They call this a way to increase voter turnout, but let's face it: 18 year olds already aren't really flocking to the voting booths. Plus, increasing the number of voters isn't really the right method of increasing voter turnout...instead why don't we get people who already have the right to vote out to the voting booths?

Now, I work with teenagers, and for one thing, they for the most part don't care about politics. For another thing, the politics that they do care about they are totally ignorant about.

I think this is an attempt to get an impressionable voter base that they can indoctrinate into voting how they want...it's definitely not a good idea.

People said the same thing when they wanted to allow women to vote, you know that right?
Techincally all politicians want people to vote for them, and vote the way they want. so... yeah

[lukeiamyourdad]

Some aren't ignorant but lowering it is ridiculous. It's fine the way it is. They're indeed in a very unstable period of their life and are quite easy to manipulate(from both the conservatist and liberal movement). Bad idea.

[ET Warrior]

Originally posted by InsaneSith
People said the same thing when they wanted to allow women to vote, you know that right?

Yeah....geeez, we gave em the vote and NOW look at the country.

[El Sitherino]

Well I think giving them a small fraction of a vote would help boost them into the electoral process, and it's only for local government. not like it's national *inserts tongue in cheek for effect*

[Uber_Saber]

Why are we old enough to be taxed, but not old enough to vote?

Here's one under-age person who intends to vote when he gets the chance. And if I'm old enough to fight for my country I think I'm old enough to vote. So no, I don't think it should be raised. Maturity and intelligence are definitely not related to age.

[toms]

Ahh, this brings back memories of all those pointless debates in school.

I don't think age has anything to do with it, i know 16 year olds who are well versed in politics and 40 year olds who are complete idiots, read papers just for the gossip and have no interest or knowledge of politics at all.

Once you become legally old enough to be considered responsible for your own actions then you deserve a right to have a say in how your country is governed. Of course, these days prosecutors seem willing to try younger and younger people as adults (and you could argue that kids grow up a lot faster these days), so if anything the age limit should be reduced. But i think 17 - 18 is about right.

Voter inteligence is a totally different matter. I guess we could test people to see if they know enough to vote Unfortunately there is no way around the fact that 80% of people who do vote will probably know almost nothing about any of the issues and be voting based on how they were brought up or the views of whatever media they are exposed to.

Voter apathy however is something that they might be anle to do something about. Howard Dean, whatever you thought of him, did manage to connect witha whole section of the population that rarely votes. Internet and other high tech voting methods are definately a step in the right direction. I'm also highly in favour of including a "none of the above" option on ballot papers, as i often feel none of the candidates are suitable, but my only option then is to note vote at all. I'm also all for fixed spending, free advertising slots and anything else to try and take the "buy your way in" feeling away.

But i don't think age has anything to do with it at all.
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What i do think needs to be addressed is breaking up the old boy network that all politicians come from and possibly introducing some younger politicians. I'm not entirely sure how you would accomplish this, but I think part of the reason young people (and other groups) don't care about politics is that they don't feel represented. For a 2 chamber system maybe the second chamber should be "fixed" somehow to proportionally represent the population, or to allow "non career politicians" to sit for short terms. I don't know. I do think something needs to be done though.