Youth Suffrage
By Everest Whitman
Youth should have the right to vote. I’m not saying that we should allow young children to vote. I would set the line somewhat arbitrarily at 14. Teenagers are citizens and members of society just as much as adults are. They often have strong, thought-out political opinions, and have the right to weigh in with the rest of the country on the decisions it makes.
In the early days of the United States, the right to vote was only given to those who were white, male, and had a sizable amount of land or taxable assets. (In New Jersey, women could vote if they were able to meet the property requirements.) There was still voting discrimination against Jews, Quakers, and Catholics in some colonies a little while after the Declaration of Independence. In 1866, all white men born in in the country were granted citizenship and the right to vote regardless of wealth, and in 1869, the rights of those of color followed. In the 1920s, women fought for and won their right to vote.
But what has not yet come to pass is that adolescents have not been given this right. It is controversial and has sparked quite a bit of recent debate. There are over a dozen non-profit organizations across the country who are fighting hard for this. World-wide this idea is not unheard of. Iran had a voting age of 15, until recently; Brazil, Austria, Cuba, and Nicaragua have a voting age of 16; and East Timor, Indonesia, Sudan, and Seychelles have a voting age of 17.
Why should we grant youth suffrage? Why is it that the U.S. should allow teenagers to vote? And how might one respond to arguments that have been raised against this?
Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds are old enough to pay income tax (and all ages of people are subject to pay sales tax); therefore, denying them the right to vote would be taxation without representation. If an individual is forced to contribute their assets to society, then they should have their voices weighed in on decisions that society makes. If you bought stock in a company, you would expect to be able to vote on company decisions. Even if most teenagers don’t make enough income to be taxed, they are still as much citizens as adults are. Homeless people, who hardly make enough money or have enough assets to be taxed, are still given the right to vote.
What kind of message would we be sending to teens by giving them the freedom to vote? We’d be letting them know that they are mature, responsible people who have the right to participate in the decision making of our country. When children are raised in the kind of environment where their thoughts are listened to and treated as valid, they become articulate, intelligent, respectful, and outspoken as teenagers. What would it be like if we did the same thing on a national or state scale? I predict that this would make a good change on the way that teenagers feel and present themselves to others.
Until women’s suffrage, it was generally assumed that women’s opinions weren’t as strong or as important as men’s. This is obviously untrue. We were led to this conclusion because women had been silenced and overshadowed for millennia, and so their voices were not heard. The same goes for teenagers today. They are always under some kind of authority figure, whether it be their parents, their teacher, or their boss. They just aren’t adjudicated the same amount of respect given to adults. They’re ideas are treated as second-rate, and they generally are not allowed to think for themselves. If it wasn’t this way, then I believe that it would clearly become apparent how much their voices really do matter.
Youth are not educated enough to make informed voting decisions because they don’t yet have reason to be. If we gave them the right to vote, they would make a better effort at doing to enough research to make informed voting choices. This would help significantly in education about democracy and the inner workings of our country. When these things become relevant to teenagers, they immediately become much more interesting. Studies demonstrate that students perform significantly better in learning things that are or can be used in a way that is directly relevant to their lives as opposed to when they are learning something abstract. If we give citizens practice voting earlier, then they will grow into better informed voters as adults.
An objection that could be raised is that teenagers have not had enough hands-on experience with the real world to be able to fully understand the implications of current issues. This can be easily dealt with. We allow 18-year-olds to vote. The real-world experience possessed by an 18-year-old is virtually identical to that of a younger teenager. So far, all our new voter’s have seen is high school, maybe a little part time work, and perhaps a little college. This is no more than a teenager would have. If we allow 18-year-olds to vote, then we rule teenagers off as eligible voters on these grounds.
Some adults might say that teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they just aren’t smart enough yet, or their minds aren’t as intellectually developed as an adult’s. If we believe this, then we would have to say that at least half of the currently voting population would be unqualified to vote and should have their suffrage removed. Let me explain why:
The most realistic, accurate, and currently accepted way of measuring intelligence is through IQ (Intelligence Quotient) testing. When you measure IQ, you take the person’s “mental age,” compare it to their physical age, then input these two numbers into a simple equation ((Physical Age / Mental Age) * 100), and you get their IQ, So someone with an intelligence typical of their age would have an IQ of 100. If you know someone’s physical age and IQ, you can run the equation backwards and find their mental age. Sarah, who is 15 years old and has an IQ of 120, is just as intelligent as George, who is 18 and of average intelligence (IQ of 100) because they both have mental ages of 18 years.
The same kind of scenario works backwards. Forrest Gump, who has an IQ of 75, has a mental age of 13.5. If we were to ban teenagers from voting on the grounds of not being smart enough, then we would also have to prevent Forrest Gump from voting, because his mental age is lower than that of these teenagers. The distribution of IQ scores is actually a perfect bell curve with an average value lying directly at 100, so exactly half of the adult population, not to count the elderly and senile, have a mental age under that expected of an average adult. We would have to take away the suffrage of half of the entire current voting population! I don’t think we’re going to do that anytime soon. Forrest Gump can vote, so why can’t a 14 year-old?
I believe giving teenagers’ suffrage is something that is bound to happen eventually, but may take some time. I foresee a single state making the change, hopefully my own (Vermont), and then having others take up the call and following suit. The right to vote is a basic right that should be given to every citizen, and so should not be spared on teens because society currently treats them as inferiors. They are people, and so deserve to have their voices heard, officially and otherwise.