Participant
Ray, I'm sure you are not alone in believing that the women's liberation movement was possibly a mistake, or Don, that voting rights should be eliminated for those under twenty-one. It certainly explains why this conference is off the mark for you.

Are women happier? I'd like to suggest that you will run into an awful lot of potholes if you take that road, that criterion for social progress. Are CEOs happier than workers? Are Americans happier than Chinese? And how can we deal with the fact that cult membership brings happiness, righteous certainty brings happiness, and even punishment brings happiness. Ignorance is bliss. When I was a child, we thought blacks were happy, sitting on the cotton bales, eating watermelon, strumming their banjos. Happiness is a possible, but by no means certain, by-product of social progress. Maturity itself does not bring happiness, but only the means by which to pursue it--that is, if you also have civil rights, full membership in society. Plenty of teenagers have maturity well beyond most adults, but cannot fully exercise it.

The pursuit of rights is certainly not the only way to achieve a good society. I would much prefer deep understanding and widespread civility. But sometimes civil rights legislation does precede understanding. When housing became integrated by law, accepting attitudes and friendships followed. And because civil rights are designed not to protect us from bad people but from those who think they know what's good for us, we all need them.

Childhood is an invention, somewhat arbitrarily constructed by each culture and each period of history. In some cultures children take on heavy responsibilities early in life, marry at puberty, etc. Human development is not limited to childhood, but continues throughout the cycle of life, to the very end. People are variously enabled or disabled all their lives. We do not withdraw the vote as the elderly powers begin to wane. Ray's granddaughter, even though she reads five books to every one of his, cannot vote. That means that she, and all like her, are no one's constituency. No representative in Congress need consider her and them. And they don't. That's why they need the power of the vote.

Perhaps, in this discussion, we do need to back up and question some more fundamental issues. I'd like to know what the objective is that Ray believes we may have lost sight of. What is the problem that lies further back?

Mike Males
Thank you, and I understand the point re voting and age limits, but let me delineate where I think it makes a fundamental mistake. First of all, half of the ADULTS in the US don't vote, and voter participation in the US has plummeted drastically--from over 60% three decades ago (dismal enough) to barely half today, and below 1/3 in off-year elections. Virtually no adults polled today can name their representative in Congress, none know who their state reps are, and very few can name their senators or even a couple of Supreme Court justices. The delusional thinking of American grownups is shocking. In a Time election poll in 2002, for example, 20% of American adults believed they were among the richest 1% in the country, and another 20% believed they soon would be. Most

American adults (if polls are right) also say they believe, literally, that angels exist. More alarming, adults who watch TV the most--and the older you are, the more you watch TV as a rule--are far more likely to believe our society is mean, a jungle, and requires authoritarian policing to straighten out.

We could infer that these awful facts mean the average grownup is too off-the-beam to exercise voting responsibly--so willfully deluded that most are better candidates for an asylum than a ballot box. It would follow that most Americans over age 18, blessedly, don't vote because they don't want to. Others have inferred that America's 100 million nonvoters are alienated from politics. In fact, we don't know why they don't vote, or why presumably sentient fully grown beings in a society flooded with information remain so certifiably lunatic. All we know is that Americans vote less than adults in any other democracy. In Ecuador, where I hid out last summer, 75% of the adult population votes in a country with one-tenth our per capita income level. My experience (and research) does not lead me to believe that maturity has anything to do with age in the USA. Of course it does at the extremes--a 3 year-old clearly can't vote intelligently, But when you get to ages above puberty, I believe the proverbial "Martian anthropologist" applying consistent standards along whatever dimension of maturity is most reasonable, would have great difficulties showing that American adults in fact behave more maturely, logically, and sanely than American

adolescents. Look at our current national leaders of both parties. Would an electorate consisting of 16 year-olds have chosen any worse?

I do appreciate the objectivity and willingness to consider alternatives among participants in this forum. Often we (me included) evaluate adolescents and adults according to our immediate perceptions of those we have had close experiences with. What I am suggesting is that we step back for a moment--that is, be Martian anthropologists.

Participant
Those statistics are compelling indeed. Let me add one more, one that always staggers my mind--about half of our adult population, including our president, does not believe in evolution. It doesn't seem to me that we run much greater risk empowering younger voters, than we do limiting the vote to adults.

Setting voting age limits at, say, sixteen, or any arbitrary age, would eliminate many younger, but extremely competent potential voters. Just for an exercise, suppose we removed all age limits for voting. Anyone, of any age, could vote, including the three year old Mike mentions who obviously can't grasp the issues. What would happen is that the older members of the family of the three year old would try to use him or her to vote their way. But that is what happens anyway. Wives voted with their husbands for most of the time they had the vote. Blacks voted with Southern whites, for whom they worked, for most of the time that they had any chance to vote. It is a long process to get people to vote in their own interest, as a bloc. So the only real consequence of extending the vote to all children, regardless of ability, would be that voting patterns already established would be expanded.

But along the way, because we don't give the vote based on proven knowledge or mature responsibility, but rather in the hope that by having the vote, greater knowledge and responsible citizenship will develop, that knowledge and responsibility would begin to accrue to those adolescents who were now enfranchised. Discussions of democracy, civics and citizenship in school would not be hypothetical exercises. Young people would have a chance to develop into responsible citizens earlier.

Participant
Half in jest I suggest that, taken sentence by sentence, the above three responses (Two from Dick, one from Mike) illustrate quite well Mike's suggestion (also perhaps half in jest) that "The delusional thinking of American grownups is shocking."

It would be fun, if we had the time, to discuss these points one sentence at a time.

Dick: When you say that "about half of our adult population, including our president, does not believe in evolution." I hope you silently, under your breath, qualify it in many ways. My interpretation of what you mean is: Do not believe that evolution tells the only and complete history of our species.

Participant
I fear that with my help we are straying from the point. All this conjecture about what might happen if we did this or did that makes for fun conversation. But . . .

What, exactly, is being advocated here?

Participant
Ray, remember that all liberation movements--blacks, women, gays, disabled, animals--all of them, especially our seeking rights for children, seemed ridiculous at first.

I think that Mike and I probably advocate slightly different, but compatible, positions. I think Mike is particularly interested in the problems arising out of the artificial differences in competence attributed to adults and adolescents, and the unfair and arbitrary treatment accorded adolescents as a result of our blindness to the actual similarities between those groups. I think, like the National Youth Rights Association, he would prefer to focus on youth rather than children, so that the arguments aren't confounded by references to three year olds. As he has pointed out, the blaming of youth is rampant in adult America, and our discriminatory policies toward them are baseless and cruel.

My own position is that all children deserve the full protection of the Constitution, that they should be treated as persons under the law. Until they have the benefit of civil rights (which they now do not have) they will continue to be segregated, discriminated against, incarcerated for behavior that is not criminal if committed by an adult, punished unfairly and more harshly than adults who commit the same crimes, suffer corporal punishment, be denied economic and political power, be cut off from information sources, be forced into educational programs against their will--and in general be prevented from living up to their full potential.

Mike Males
What exactly am I advocating re voting? Fair question, and Richard’s right that we largely agree. The flawed answer depends on my experience and the developmental research I’ve seen. I would first say that no US citizen should be denied voting based on any arbitrary characteristic, but that we are reasonable to establish guidelines. I would set the voting and candidacy age at 14. Practical cognitive research indicates that by 14, the vast majority of the population has its marbles--all they’re going to, anyway. I would allow petition, under youth emancipation law guidelines, for a person under 14 to have electoral rights. Three-year-olds couldn’t credibly file such a petition, but a bright 12-year-old certainly could. I think we run no risk expanding the electorate downward in age.

If younger teens are too apathetic and uniformed to vote, they are not going to, and the problem takes care of itself. Some might worry that a charismatic brown shirt candidate could seduce masses of teens (no more than adults, history suggests--Hitler and Mussolini being examples), but the far bigger problem I see is that teens generally reflect the attitudes of adults around them, and most (as high school mock elections indicate) are likely to vote they way their parents do naturally. A few brave ones excepted, youths are not rebellious or revolutionary. Too bad. I think the imagined problems with this scheme to lower the voting age would take care of themselves--but, for that same reason, we would not see much revolutionary change. Today, adults reelect the incumbent 95% of the time, and the candidate who spends the most money an equally high proportion. I don’t believe teens would do any better than that (except in some localized races where a strong youth issue predominates, such as repeal of a curfew), but they couldn’t possibly do any worse. If we extended the vote to salamanders, we could not POSSIBLY have worse leadership than we do now--and again, I am talking in bipartisan terms.

As a certifiable Californian, I can say confidently that if a coalition of adolescent

and amphibian voters elected an mob of pop stars and invertebrates to Sacramento, there is no way they could mess up this state any worse than Gray (blackout) Davis, Neanderthal no-tax Republican legislators, the rabid recall petitioners led by a far-right convicted auto thief, our just-above-junk-bond-status budgeters, and our spineless sellout state Senate (as of today’s compromise) have already done. In fact, if we Californians can’t commission a reliable psychic to channel Mark Twain or Carey McWilliams to choose our state leaders, this brain-addled middle-ager would soberly suggest that we ONLY allow teenagers to vote in the jake-crazy recall election scheduled for October 7. Gov. Timberlake sounds a lot better than anyone else on the ballot.

Participant
Mike and Dick: when you compare children to adults, and then go overboard and include salamanders, I think you are carried away with the fun of the ridiculous. Of course I agree that the lack of wisdom in mature US adults is displayed in most elections, but to jump from that solid observation to suggest that adding children to the electorate would help either children or adults is a leap of faith that loses me. Where I come out from that observation is that we need to improve the wisdom of adults, including their love, training and upbringing of their children.

Somewhere down that line of activity reducing the age for voting might make some sense. But to start with the age of voting before improving the conduct of adults in bringing up their children is, in my mind, without merit.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could ask some children to join in this discussion and find out their own views on this????

Participant
Don, I think you would find that the majority of children today would not support children's rights, any more than women would have supported women's liberation in the early sixties. Would that mean that they shouldn't have them?

I'm sure Mike included salamanders to make the point that we have little to worry about if youth were voting, because adult voting is so flawed. The problem is very much in the other direction--it would be difficult to get children to vote independently, in their own behalf.

I know from what you have said in other conferences that you, too, are dismayed at voting results, and would like to find some way to confine voting to those who understand the issues. But that is a slippery slope. I think the Supreme Court has wisely struck down any attempt to establish a test for the right to vote. We give the vote broadly because any such discriminatory test is likely to be flawed, even if it makes sense to the designers of the test (eliminating women and blacks, or those without property, for example--remember it was our wise founders who took those actions) and because having the vote is meant to increase participation and responsibility, even if the group being enfranchised doesn't seem qualified, as was true for women and blacks, and is now true for adolescents. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to translate your criterion of adequate parenting into a test for enfranchisement? And how it would further burden already overburdened parents, leading them to abuse their children even more?

I support Mike's plan for automatically giving the vote to those fourteen and over, and allow petitions to vote from those younger.

Participant
Dick: In some ways, the dialogue that some of us are having with you and Mike is having more difficulty in reaching common understanding than any we have had before. I feel that my "reasoning" on this is escaping you, and I detect that you are feeling much the same way with regard to your "reasoning".

I will try once again to express mine more clearly in the next response.

Participant
* I never suggested "confining" voting to those who understand the issues. I have suggested a number of procedures that would increase voter competence in understanding the issues. Of course this is also a slippery slope, but so is having a complex nation governed by voters who don't understand.

* I think equating giving children a vote to giving it to blacks or other minorities is a mistake. Children, pups, cubs, etc are all names for immature members of living creatures. For all of us "animals", parenting our young is a built-in imperative and responsibility connected with reproducing our species. We have already agreed that a three year old human should not vote. Some of you say that puberty is a logical mile post for this "responsibility". I think "responsibility" is a more accurate description than "right".

* I believe that this "responsibility" demands more maturity, education, and understanding of the complexity of voting in a multi-ethnic, highly industrialized, and powerful nation like ours than in many others. [This may not seem relevant to some, but the statistics show that young drivers below 21 have more fatal accidents than any other age group].

* I respect the concerns voiced by Dick and Mike for the plight of children. I think that our discussions here would be more fruitful if we accepted their concerns as they have listed them but opened up the search for mitigating strategies other than reducing the voting age.

Participant
Don, my apologies for misunderstanding and misrepresenting your views on improving the electoral process.

I still think that the comparisons to blacks and women are apt. In hindsight we often forget just how unqualified we thought those groups were. It took more than a century for each of those groups to overcome those prejudices and become enfranchised. I'll bet that Americans in general at the turn of the century, maybe even in the thirties, would have thought the average white adolescent superior to the average black adult.

Voting is just one of a number of policy recommendations related to reducing the plight of children. But you might not find the others much more palatable. Juvenile justice, for example. Or child labor laws. Maybe Mike will address those issues more in the remaining days.

Mike Males
All right, I will drop the raving and get to what concerns me. I believe inexperience (youth) is one kind of weakness, but it is balanced by strengths--a fresh look at problems in the present world, along with idealism. Adults experience and sense of history is a strength, but only to extent that adults perceive that the world today is very different from the one they knew best, decades ago. Mead and others make, I think, compelling arguments that the inadaptability of adults to rapidly changing societies actually makes adults less informed than adolescents are.

To take Donald’s good example, it is true that novice drivers (most of whom are under 21) have more crashes than older drivers (though not as many as drivers over 75), which reflects young drivers lack of experience. However, teens have much lower rates of suicide, drug abuse, and other serious forms of accidents such as falls than older adults do, which indicates some compensating strengths in the young.

Ideally, the freshness, more flexible thinking, and resilience of younger people would complement the experience and more solidified thinking of the old. That has not been the case, however. On many serious social issues--the war on drugs, sex education and programs, crime control, international relations, civil rights--we see adults continue to reflect attitudes and policies that were prevalent 30 to 100 years ago (and were dubious even then). America’s war on drugs has not changed an iota since the Chinese and opium scares of 1880, for example, and our crime policies are grounded in 1970-era demographic fallacies. I’m sorry if the remark about salamanders sounded facetious, but our current California political/fiscal crisis is a replay of decades-old left-right squabbles that can’t get off dead center and perceive present realities.

The utter callousness with which an aging electorate and political structure is decimating the institutions on which the young, as well as the poor and vulnerable, depend reflects, to me, a primitive, reptilian-brain fear. The kids aren’t like us. They aren’t the right color. They scare us--that is, the images we see on TV do, and older groups are the most likely to receive and believe what they see on TV. They are not our future. We don’t share a fate. We don’t identify with them, and we’re not going to pay for them. As the electorate gets older, the fear deriving from inability to comprehend a world that is not like the one we grew up in will get worse.

I have never thought grownup brains are as inflexible as we act--I attribute it to our self-indulgence, not our physiology. Give an old balding middle-ager like me incentive to change and we can change as quickly as any 14 year-old. But for the most part, we don’t have to change--or don’t think we do. Right now, dominant authorities are trying to forcibly restore the California of 1960--perceived as white, safe, good to get rich in and moral (however delusional most of that image is)--by walling themselves away in enclaves and abandoning the rest.

I support extending the voting age downward because I feel adults no longer can be counted upon to act in the interests of the young, or even really comprehend them. Recently, a statewide TV network decided to do a program on youths complaining that their school does not have a library—that’s right, we have newer schools in poorer areas in this wealthy state that have no libraries. Any legislator likes to get on TV, so some showed up for the forum—but there was a detachment about their concern. The question legislators seemed to want to ask was, Yes, too bad you students don’t have a library, but what IMPORTANT interest group wants you to have one? Tell me that, and I’ll get to work. Students themselves aren’t important enough.

The young are not going to vote in huge numbers, at least not immediately, but if they had political rights, we would begin to see more of their issues injected into the debate. Candidates will have to address high school audiences, high schoolers could run for office. To pick up the issues Richard mentioned, a candidate who has to listen to a 16-year-old describe the unfairness of not being hired simply because he/she is young (a discrimination when, applied to anyone over 40, is unlawful), or being picked up by the cops for peaceably walking down the street at 10 p.m., or serving 6 months in CYA for a possessing a joint when their adult accomplice got only 30 days suspended--and to know that 16 year-olds may hold the couple of thousand votes that could make a difference in a tight race--is going to have to take young people a bit more seriously.

Participant
I hope I'm not jumping in too late. I was away for a week attending the International Democratic Education Conference in Troy, NY. It was excellent. It is a shame there hasn't been more discussion of education; perhaps it could be a separate discussion later. Anyways, since the voting age has factored so prominently in the last few day's posts I hope you will all indulge me and read the following document taken from the NYRA website, I hope it will address many of the concerns that have been raised regarding the idea of lowering the voting age.

"No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a choice in the election of those who make the laws under which…we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined." 1

In 1971 the United States ratified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution granting the right to vote to 18-20-year-olds. The 26th Amendment was the fastest to be ratified in U.S. history. At the height of the Vietnam War most Americans realized the sick double standard inherent in sending 18-year-old soldiers to fight and die for their country when they weren't allowed to vote. Double standards didn't go away in 1971. Right now youth are subject to adult penalties and even the death sentence despite lacking the right to vote.

Frank Zimring found that "Between 1992 and 1995, forty American states relaxed the requirements for transferring an accused under the maximum age of jurisdiction into criminal court,"2 and "In Colorado, for example, defendants under the maximum age for juvenile court jurisdiction may nonetheless be charged by direct filing in criminal court if they are over 14 years of age and are charged with one of a legislative list of violent crimes."3

What kind of twisted message do we send when we tell youth they are judged mature, responsible adults when they commit murder, but silly, brainless kids when they want to vote? This is a double standard, no different than during the Vietnam War. War isn't a dead issue now either, leaders who youth can't vote for today may send them to war tomorrow. Lowering the voting age is the just, fair way to set things straight.

Just like all other Americans, young Americans pay taxes. In fact, they pay a lot of taxes. Teens pay an estimated $9.7 Billion dollars in sales taxes alone.4 Not to mention many millions of taxes on income, according to the IRS, "You may be a teen, you may not even have a permanent job, but you have to pay taxes on the money you earn."5 Youth pay billions in taxes to state, local, and federal governments yet they have absolutely no say over how much is taken. This is what the American Revolution was fought over; this is taxation without representation.

In addition to being affected by taxes, young people are affected by every other law that Americans live under. As fellow citizens in this society, every action or inaction taken by lawmakers affects youth directly, yet they have no say in the matter. In her 1991 testimony before a Minnesota House subcommittee, 14-year-old Rebecca Tilsen had this to say:

"If 16-year-olds are old enough to drink the water polluted by the industries that you regulate, if 16-year-olds are old enough to breathe the air ruined by garbage burners that government built, if 16-year-olds are old enough to walk on the streets made unsafe by terrible drugs and crime policies, if 16-year-olds are old enough to live in poverty in the richest country in the world, if 16-year-olds are old enough to get sick in a country with the worst public health-care programs in the world, and if 16-year-olds are old enough to attend school districts that you underfund, then 16-year-olds are old enough to play a part in making them better."

The just power of government comes from the consent of the governed, as it stands now youth are governed (overly so, some may say) but do not consent. This is un-American. Like all tax-paying, law-abiding Americans, youth must be given the right to vote.

Politicians represent various constituencies; currently young people are no one's constituency. Why should politicians care about the needs and wishes of youth when they have no ability to vote for or against them? With the new campaign finance law youth can't even donate money to campaigns. Lowering the voting age will give politicians a real reason to respect the desires of young people.

Youth feel alienated from politics and politicians, lowering the voting age will include them in the process. The words spoken before the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting lowering the voting age in 1971 are as true then as they are now, "The anachronistic voting-age limitation tends to alienate them from systematic political processes and to drive them to into a search for an alternative, sometimes violent, means to express their frustrations over the gap between the nation's deals and actions. Lowering the voting age will provide them with a direct, constructive and democratic channel for making their views felt and for giving them a responsible stake in the future of the nation." 6

A common argument against lowering the voting age is that it isn't a burden to wait a few years. Denying youth the right to vote isn't the same as denying women or racial minorities, according to opponents, since in a few years young people will grow up and be able to vote. Why go through the trouble to lower the age to 16 when after two years they'll be able to vote anyways? Were it that simple, then perhaps, but it isn't.

Would it be acceptable to limit the right to vote to those with a certain income, reasoning that it is a flexible standard, those will less income must only work harder or wait till they too make enough to vote? No it wouldn't. Voters vote based on their individual circumstances, when those circumstances change often so do their voting habits. The concerns of a 14 year old are different than that of a 24 year old, just as the concerns of a poor man differ from that of a rich man. The beliefs and priorities of 16 year olds as a class are unique to them; we cannot expect former 16 year olds to have as accurate a perspective as those who are currently that age. If we care at all about the needs and desires of youth, they must be allowed to vote for themselves.

Currently the right to vote is granted at perhaps the worst possible moment in one's life. At 18 many youth leave the home and community they have lived for most their life, either to go away to college or to move away from home in search of work. At the moment they are supposed to vote they either have a new community that they are unfamiliar with or they must attempt to vote absentee back home, a process that turns off many new voters.

Lowering the voting age to 16 will give the vote to people who have roots in a community, have an appreciation for local issues, and will be more concerned about voting than those just two years older. Youth have comfortable surroundings, school, parents, and stable friends, they feel connected to their community; all factors that will increase their desire and need to vote. Lower the voting age, and youth will vote.

For several reasons lowering the voting age will increase voter turnout. It is common knowledge that the earlier in life a habit is formed the more likely that habit or interest will continue throughout life. If attempts are made to prevent young people from picking up bad habits, why are no attempts made to get youth started with good habits, like voting? If citizens begin voting earlier, and get into the habit of doing so earlier, they are more likely to stick with it through life.

Not only will turnout increase for the remainder of young voter's lives, the turnout of their parents will increase as well: "A 1996 survey by Bruce Merrill, an Arizona State University journalism professor, found a strong increase in turnout. Merrill compared turnout of registered voters in five cities with Kids Voting with turnout in five cities without the program. Merrill found that between five and ten percent of respondents reported Kids Voting was a factor in their decision to vote. This indicated that 600,000 adults nationwide were encouraged to vote by the program."7

Kids Voting is a program in which children participate in a mock vote and accompany their parents to the polls on Election Day. Reports show that even this modest gesture to including youth increased the interest in voting of their whole family. Parents were more likely to discuss politics with their kids and thus an estimated 600,000 adult voters were more likely to vote because of it. Lowering the voting age will strengthen this democracy for all of us.

The argument that youth "should not vote because they lack the ability to make informed and intelligent decisions is valid only if that standard is applied to all citizens."8 But yet this standard is not applied to all citizens, only young people. "We do not deprive a senile person of this right, nor do we deprive any of the millions of alcoholics, neurotics, psychotics and assorted fanatics who live outside hospitals of it. We seldom ever prevent those who are hospitalized for mental illness from voting." 9

Even beyond senile, neurotic, and psychotic adults, regular adults often do not meet the unrealistic standard opponents to youth voting propose. Turn on the Tonight Show one night and see the collection of adult buffoons who can't tell Jay Leno who the vice-president is, or who have forgotten how many states are in this country. Yet these adults are happily given the right to vote. The fact is, intelligence or maturity is not the basis upon which the right to vote is granted, if that were the case all voters would need to pass a test before voting. Though "…under voting rights jurisprudence, literacy tests are highly suspect (and indeed are banned under federal law), and lack of education or information about election issues is not a basis for withholding the franchise."10 Youth shouldn't be held to a stricter standard than adults; lower the voting age.

It is silly to fear that huge masses of youth will rush to the voting booth and unwittingly vote for Mickey Mouse and Britney Spears. By and large, those individuals with no interest in politics and no knowledge on the subject will stay home from the polls and not vote. This mechanism works for adult voters as well. Youth will behave no differently.

Besides foolishly throwing a vote away, some worry about youth voting for dangerous radicals. These fears are unfounded as well, "We should remember, too, that many people today vote at first, and often for many years after, exactly as their parents voted. We are all deeply influenced, in politics as everything else, by the words and example of people we love and trust."11 One's political leanings are influenced by their community and their family, and it is likely young voters will vote in much the same way as their parents, not because they are coerced to do so, but because of shared values.

With the voting age at 16 there is the opportunity for new voters have a greater opportunity to be educated voters as most are in high school. When the voting age is lowered schools will most likely schedule a civics class to coincide with 16 that will introduce the issues and prepare new voters. It stands to reason that these young voters will be better prepared to vote than their elders.

Noting that youth will most likely vote well we must wonder, is it at all possible for a voter to vote wrong? Did voters choose poorly when the elected Clinton in 1992? Republicans would say so. Did voters choose poorly when they elected Bush in 2000? Democrats would say so. If youth were able to vote for either of them, or against them would they be voting wrong? I don't think so. All voters have their own reasons for voting, we may disagree with their reasons, but we must respect their right to make a decision. This is what we must do with youth.

Granting youth the right to vote will have a direct effect on their character, intelligence and sense of responsibility. Is it any wonder why many youth feel apathetic towards politics? After 18 years of their life being told their opinion doesn't matter, they are just foolish children who should be seen and not heard, is anyone surprised that many people over 18 feel turned off by politics and don't vote? We can see this contrast between volunteering and politics. Teenagers have amazingly high levels of volunteering and community service, however many feel turned off by politics. Even small gestures like mock voting has a large effect on teen's interest in politics, of students participating in Kids Voting USA, "More than 71% of students reported frequently or occasionally questioning parents about elections at home. These same students also viewed voting with great importance. About 94% felt it was very important or somewhat important to vote."12 Including youth in a real, substantive way in politics will lead to even more interest as they take their public-spirited nature into the political realm.

Many opponents to lowering the voting age assume apathetic youth today will be no different when given the right to vote, this is wrong. Responsibility comes with rights, not the other way around. "It is not a pre-condition of self-government that those that govern be wise, educated, mature, responsible, and so on, but instead these are the results which self-government is designed to produce."13 Educator and youth rights theorist, John Holt points out that if youth "think their choices and decisions make a difference to them, in their own lives, they will have every reason to try to choose and decide more wisely. But if what they think makes no difference, why bother to think?"14 He stresses this point again, "It is not just power, but impotence, that corrupts people. It gives them the mind and soul of slaves. It makes them indifferent, lazy, cynical, irresponsible, and, above all, stupid."15

Lowering the voting age may not be the magic bullet to improve the lives of youth, but by giving them a real stake in their futures and their present lives it will push them to become involved, active citizens of this great nation. The National Youth Rights Association strongly urges lawmakers and individuals in this country to seriously consider lowering the voting age.

1. Wesberry v. Saunders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964).

2. Zimring, Frank. American Youth Violence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 108

3. Ibid. p. 119

4. According to http://thestc.com/STrates.stm the average sales tax in the country is 5.62%, According to a study by Interep (http://www.interep.com/pr/PRTeen02.pdf) teens spent $172 Billion in 2001.

5. "Tax Interactive." http://www.irs.gov/individuals/page/0,,id%3D15579,00.html. Visited 22 February 2003

6. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Report on Lowering the Voting Age to 18, S. Rep. No 26, 92nd Congress, 1st Session 5 (1971).

7. "Proposal to Lower the Voting Age." http://www.youthrights.org/voteproposal.html. Visited 22 February 2003

8. Farson, Richard. Birthrights. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1974. p. 182-83

9. Ibid. p. 177-78

10. Davis, Samuel M., et al. Children in the Legal System: Cases and Materials. Westbury, New York: The Foundation Press. 1997. p. 126

11. Holt, John. Escape from Childhood. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1974. p. 169

12. "Proposal to Lower the Voting Age." http://www.youthrights.org/voteproposal.html. Visited 22 February 2003

13. Stroll, Avrum, "Censorship, Models and Self-Government," The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 1967) The Hague, Netherlands: Nijhoff Pub., p.81

14. Holt, John. Escape from Childhood. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1974. p. 156

15. Ibid. p. 156

Participant
Alex has really shaken up my aversion to dropping the voting age. I hope, Alex, that you will add some thoughts that have bothered me but which you haven't yet addressed specifically.

There seems to be a consensus among those wishing to lower the voting age that the target is between 14 and 16. This preference at least gives some recognition to my concern that most mammals, including us, are relatively slow developers.

I have therefore argued that comparing the vote for blacks and for "kids" are two quite different issues. But above the age of 14, I am beginning to see some similarity. But I still see the maturing process still a critical factor during the ages of 14 to 16.

I guess I would still "vote" against lowering the age for voting under current conditions of adversarial, sound-bite arguments of the candidates and those pushing for their pet changes in the law.

If we could combine reducing the voting age with some of the new procedures for collaborative, deliberative decision making, my heretofore stubborn objection to lowering the voting age would be weakened. Of importance to this idea is the fact that the new procedures for citizen education leading up to the vote are, in themselves, excellent educational experiences for all ages.

Mike Males
Donald--very quickly, I’m not arguing that youth vote is the only way to give youths power. However, it is a good way to elucidate larger arguments on the subject of youth rights, as today’s discussion shows. I also think voting is, in some ways, fundamental to other rights.

I’ve been talking to adult groups on my views of youth issues for nearly 15 years. I am happy when adults disagree with me and give reasons why--I can be as wrong as the next person. But most of the time, they actually agree--verbally. Then, when it comes time for official action, they ALWAYS come down on the side of negativism and repression. I’m just looking at another news story today in the San Francisco Chronicle, roughly the 100 millionth in which the reporter agreed with all the facts I presented, then turned around and wrote a viciously anti-youth story quoting emotional assertions and anecdotes.

At one time, I believed American adults would approach youth issues in a rational, fair minded manner. I no longer believe that. Nor do I think today’s adults can be trusted to represent youth interests. Educating adults does not work. Information is not the issue. I believe our system only responds to the power of constituencies. Without political power, youth are going to continue to be scapegoated for every social ill, and angrily repressed, as were other minorities in the past, until they acquired power. It will be difficult for youths to acquire power, but if they do not do so, I believe the next generation will be crushed.

Alex: In 1991, I and others persuaded the Montana Legislature to authorize a non-binding referendum in grades 7-12 on whether their schools should be tobacco free.

The Montana Student Tobacco Referendum was held in schools on one day, and students were free to participate or not. The final turnout, 51,000 votes, represented 90% of students in attendance. There was intense debate, even though it was only an advisory referendum (though some school boards did act on it). I think students will participate once they see a stake. (A majority voted to make schools tobacco free, by the way.)

Participant
Mike: Our exchanges are getting far more constructive today than they seemed to me to have been a few days ago. I agree closely with your most recent views just above. But -- and you knew I would have a BUT :)--I have one point that I think important:

Most of the time we have been "arguing" the pros and cons of child voting as if the answers were a clean yes or no. This is the typical way for us Americans to address political differences.

But like all big issues, yes/no choices seldom provide a solution. I think now we are beginning to search for some strategies that include both the pros and cons of child participation. Or is this just uncharacteristic optimism on my part??

Participant
Mike earlier surfaced a provocative comment about not caring about youth receiving the franchise, but then he backed away to explore another point.

But I’d like to push the idea a bit.

I don’t get much juice from the idea myself. I’m not persuaded that youth, who have yet to developmentally (as far as we know) understand balancing competing interests at the level of public policy – another name for politics. Not that adults do either, but the negative does not prove the case. Also, I’m growing increasingly impatient with narrow and adultist views, read Boomer views, that equate voting with political participation, or "politics. Look no further than your July 21/28 issue of The Nation, "Thomas Goeghegan’s all-too-predictable "Dems – Why Not Woo the Young," (page 10).

Young people today "participate," in their schools, their churches, their neighborhoods and other local institutions in record-breaking numbers. And imagine, there’s not even a Vietnam War to protest!

I’ve actually got an alternative. I’ll call it the National Young Citizens’ Investment Fund (NYCIF, complete with a title word for every political persuasion). And Mike, you might really like this, given your bent for number crunching…

The NYCIF goes something like this: engineer a percentage for all American adult wealth that is represented by the expenditure of political campaigns (local, state, and national). Apply that formula to a smaller percentage for all American youth wealth (somehow defined) and then deposit it in federally insured accounts. At the age of majority, young people would be responsible for announcing where in the realm of public spending those dollars should go. They’d essentially be creating their own public budgets.

But I digress…

What I really wanted to register here is that this conversation has really strayed a ways from youth and their civil rights. The franchise, then, is thus quite tangential, to me at least. Before I’d want to spend a long time discussing voting and its merits, I’d prefer to grant and enforce the right of young people to occupy public space, their rights to experiment, make mistakes, cheat and get caught and learn better. Their right to feel safe in their own churches. We need to support their rights to free speech in their newspapers, their intellectual rights to read in their libraries, their rights to receive the attentions of designers, urban planners, and architects. Their right not to feel guilty or otherized or marginalized for simply growing up. Young peoples’ rights, as we all understand here, are breached every day in our age-based Jim Crow culture.

Finally, a word on comparative women’s and youth histories or historical trajectories. As an American historian, I could recommend that we devote lots of time to critically evaluating the similarities and differences between the two. One huge difference, off the bat, is that First Wave of Feminism (which is not the totality of "women’s history") was largely inspired by European politics – which is very different from what I know about youth politics today, unless one wants to argue that young people are advancing a civil rights agenda based on internet communications – but then there’d be the problem of producing evidence… At the end of the comparative conversation, however, what would we have? Not very much, I submit. Movements, like history itself, is neither circular or reproducible.

All this brings me back to the Boomer ruler for measuring today’s youth political "apathy." If they don’t become "radical" the way "we" were, then they’re just lazy good-for-nothings. Kids these days!

Participant
"Alex has really shaken up my aversion to dropping the voting age. I hope, Alex, that you will add some thoughts that have bothered me but which you haven't yet addressed specifically."

That’s what I'm here for. I hope I can shake up your objections further.

"There seems to be a consensus among those wishing to lower the voting age that the target is between 14 and 16. This preference at least gives some recognition to my concern that most mammals, including us, are relatively slow developers.

"I have therefore argued that comparing the vote for blacks and for "kids" are two quite different issues. But above the age of 14, I am beginning to see some similarity. But I still see the maturing process still a critical factor during the ages of 14 to 16. "

Yes, there is a consensus of 14-16 among those of us wishing to lower the voting age. But there are others who don't wish to lower the voting age at all, but rather abolish it and either replace it with a new standard or have no standard at all.

As for human development, I suppose that question is unanswerable at this point. Development is not a uniform nor insular process, and can be affected by many outside factors. For example physical maturity is moving younger while what we call emotional maturity may seem to be moving older. I am not a biologist so I cannot comment on physical maturity, but I believe emotional maturity is a product of how we raise and treat people. Currently society denies both rights and responsibility to youth, and is intent on treating them as incompetent children. Sad fact is this kind of treatment produces the kind of children it anticipates.

So the question becomes if society granted rights, respect, and responsibility to youth how mature would they be? I'd argue the difference would be night and day (and I already have a high opinion of youth). The more we trust youth, the more they will impress us. All people rise and fall to expectations, right now expectations for youth are dismally low (and also unbalanced and hypocritical btw). And as Mike is good at pointing out, youth far exceed the negative expectations placed on them. It is my assumption they would meet or surpass wildly positive expectations placed on them as well.

I guess I would still "vote" against lowering the age for voting under current conditions of adversarial, sound-bite arguments of the candidates and those pushing for their pet changes in the law.

Well, our current democratic system and how it looks shouldn't be a precondition for granting equal treatment. Whether or not the current system has problems is a debate for another time. But the right to vote as a principle shouldn't change based on the system. If adults vote in a bad system, then so should youth. If adults vote in a good system, then so should youth.

If we could combine reducing the voting age with some of the new procedures for collaborative, deliberative decision making, my heretofore stubborn objection to lowering the voting age would be weakened. Of importance to this idea is the fact that the new procedures for citizen education leading up to the vote are, in themselves, excellent educational experiences for all ages."

Yes, the potential for educating voters prior to voting on civics and citizenship could have a dramatic positive effect on politics. This would be a good result of lowering the voting age.

Participant
Alex: I am ready to consider lowering the voting age, but do not agree with "Well our current democratic system and how it looks shouldn't be a precondition for granting equal treatment."

I disagree for two reasons: 1) I think that "children" are even less able to evaluate sound-bite propaganda. 2) I believe that we need to get rid of sound-bites to the extent possible and to introduce new and better procedures for citizen decision making.

Perhaps if I held out for linking process with age reduction you and I could find a consensus for doing both. As a package, those two changes in voting would be better than either alone--and possibly more capable of getting political backing, than either alone.

To be even more realistic, I would be willing to accept a lowering of the voting age as a change in the law and have procedures for better decision-making voluntary, but with federal funding for those "children" and "adults" who are willing to participate.

Mike Males
Donald: Not a lot of disagreement, and I appreciate where there is, because it contributes to better refined arguments. There is no one solution that will automatically fix everything or, if not implemented, will automatically sabotage a solution.

Can adults represent youth? They OUGHT to be able to. For reasons stated before, I don’t think they do. How youth can act in their own interests is not set in concrete, but I see voting as a modest beginning. Look at Anthony--he actually wants to give them money!

Could youths, as a rule, evaluate sound-bite propaganda? I think so. This is the third mass-media generation. They are used to bombardment with advertising images--they grew up with them. Business Week featured a cover story of ad execs lamenting that the old simplistic mass marketing formulas that sold things to Boomers--celebrity endorsements, slogans such as Pepsi Generation, etc.--fall flat with today’s young consumers. Teens today are making Madison Avenue scramble for new pitches, and a major complication is niche consumers-a pitch that appeals to one youth niche offends another. That is why ads have become more complex, even contradictory in tone--experimentation is going on.

And again, when you say kids may prove vulnerable to sound-bites or other cheap advertising tricks, my question is--sure they might, but compared to who? Adults are notorious for falling for Willie-Horton or where’s the beef? or evildoer scams and inevitably vote for the candidate who is (a) incumbent, and (b) spends the most money. Youths may do that as well, or the advertisers may develop new schemes to reach the new generation, but youths would not be worse voters, in my view.

Or more irresponsible exercisers of rights in general.

I’m not predicting that enfranchised youth will straighten this country out. After all, the first president elected when women got the vote was... Harding. The first president elected after 18 year-olds got the vote was... too painful to confess. Nevertheless, I think it would be a modest step among many vital to slowing and reversing this country’s disastrous, cataclysmic drift toward ever-rising fear, stratification, and belligerence.