Should children have the right to vote?

by rw • 17 years ago

27 64 17 years ago

russell2• 17 years ago

This is a well argued essay promoting that children should be allow to vote, not on the basis of age, but by demonstrating a grasp of civics and government by examination, for example. I was skeptical, but he convinced me. If a kid learns how our government works and what civic responsibility means, why not? The incentive and prestige of early voting might lead to a more responsible populace. As he says, with educated children voting we might not have had Bush the Younger.

anamax3• 17 years ago

> If a kid learns how our government works and what civic responsibility means, why not?

If an adult can't demonstrate knowledge of how our govt works and what civic responsibility means, does said adult get to vote?

BTW - Which definition of "civic responsibility" are we using?

russell2• 17 years ago

There was some discussion of adult knowledge, but he felt, as do I, that things stay the same for adults. There has been too much in the way of using literacy tests to keep minorities from voting in our past. Adult requirements should stay the same.

Civic responsibility was mine, not his, but I was thinking in terms of learning about local government and institutions. I just happen to think that our society has a little too much expectation of entitlements and too little of individual responsibility and contribution.

As far as test content (me again), it should be free of current political controversy. How laws are made and passed, but probably not on how to bribe a Senator. Maybe on something on how citizens get change outside of government, but probably more on the voting process. After all voting is the goal of the process.

karl11• 17 years ago

It bothers me that someone trying to present evidence on whether or not children should vote needs to throw in political commentary on how voting minors would have averted the disaster that was George W. Bush. How can someone be scientifically or philosophically credible if he/she is too immature to resist political jabs when presenting an apolitical argument? On top of this, it puts off people who might otherwise be intrigued by the author's thoughts but aren't after reading unnecessary criticisms of their own.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

I stopped reading at the Bush comment, not out of offense, but out of disappointment that I was spending my time reading something that lost its dignity (isn't this a perfect example of what he alluded to never doing early in the essay?)

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Haven't read the whole article, but my feeling is that basing eligibility to vote on passing a test might be a bad idea. It could end up meaning "you are allowed to vote, if you will vote for the right thing", where the right thing would presumably be voting for the people in power at the time of the introduction of the test.

bcneige• 17 years ago

The argument against that is that it has the same effect as the poll tax--keeping the lower classes out. It is claimed that this discriminates against the races with lower literate populations.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

Voted up for "merely politically impossible [...], rather than 2 to the politically impossible power."

tptacek6• 17 years ago

An argument you might make against juvenile suffrage is that the current system protects children from politics. It's not simply that they'd vote the way their parents wanted them to, thus slanting the outcome, it's that they'd be targeted by political pressure --- from their parents, teachers, peers, and the media --- in ways that they aren't today.

azanar4• 17 years ago

This doesn't answer the previous question so much as begs a new question. The current system protects children from politics, but why?

You mention targeted political pressure, but only in a vague sense; it almost seems like foreboding of something unknown, and therefore scary and threatening. It may not be for you, but for people who develop this sense of foreboding about everything unknown, this sort of argument can carry a lot of weight.

Anyway, this pressure already exists. It is how people already have formed political identities when they reach voting age, and are willing to defend them, even irrationally, against people of differing political philosophies. If they don't get it from the parents, or the teachers, or the media, they'll get it from their peers, who will have gotten it from the prior three sources. Protecting them in this sense seems like an almost insurmountable problem.

Or maybe I misunderstood what you mean by political pressure?

tptacek6• 17 years ago

I mean, right now, nobody is intently inquiring about who a 12 year old is voting for. Commercials on TV don't target them for voting. They aren't asked to take positions on extremely complex issues like EFCA or stem cell research. They are spared a lot (not all, but a lot) of the most polarizing political controversies we're exposed to.

I'm not really trying to defend this argument, but if I was going to be a devil's advocate, I'd say that increased exposure to American politics might not be good for juvenile mental health.

DavidSJ3• 17 years ago

Generally speaking, when adults tried to protect me from myself as a kid, they did much more harm than good.

I believe this is true for most kids.

muerdeme• 17 years ago

How is protection from politics protecting the kids from themselves?

Given how much it pisses me off, I kinda wish I were still protected from politics.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

There is a daily struggle that good parents have with the media and advertising that many of us probably don't want to see amplified.

req2• 17 years ago

Even now, there were many stories a few months ago about (Obama, McCain) supporting children in predominantly (McCain, Obama) territory getting bullied. Maybe letting them in on the process would foster discussion and let them think before they get stuck in a mindset.

tptacek6• 17 years ago

You think raising the stakes will defuse the problem?

Allocator2008• 17 years ago

Let's remember this is written by the same fellow who is convinced that Euclidean quantum gravity is a dead end because he feels there is some fundamental (rather than emergent) property about time that makes it unique. The vast majority of people who have thought about this believe time to be emergent, not fundamental. Hell, the Hamiltonian function doesn't even have time as we know it. So in my opinion this individual has some serious credibility issues.

That said, he does make some good point on this particular issue about minor's rights. Maybe lower the voting age to 16? Like if you are old enough to drive, you are old enough to vote. Of course this would be good for the GOP since children engaged enough to vote at that age would often be copying their parents, who could be Rush Limbaugh "ditto-heads" or the like. Nevertheless, I would be open to allowing the voting age to be 16.

Still though it is astounding to me that people who think time is a fundamental property are taken seriously in academia. That is sooo 19th century. I really don't have the time for such folks.

tocomment2• 17 years ago

(Downvoted for ad hominin argument)

RK• 17 years ago

I really couldn't tell if that ad hominem was a satire of ad hominem or not...

discojesus4• 17 years ago

No, for the same reason children shouldn't have the right to enter legally binding contracts.

No pre-frontal cortex, no votey.

discojesus4• 17 years ago

Apparently someone likes to downvote posts they disagree with without replying, so allow me to elaborate:

The prefrontal cortex is the section of the brain responsible for executive function, impulse control, and long-term decision making. Essentially, a fully-developed prefrontal cortex is what makes an adult an adult. The prefrontal cortex doesn't fully come online until your early to mid-twenties (this is why all of these rights are generally around the same age, 18-21...unless one wants to suggest that we picked those ages out of a hat).

Most children do not have a fully-developed prefrontal cortex. Therefore it is in their and society's best interest to prohibit them from making long-term decisions, since they really don't have the equipment to make lucid choices about the distant future.

So if you're looking for a criterion for voter eligibility, it should be the presence of a developed prefrontal cortex, not age, and certainly not a goddamn civics test (at 17, I would have gotten a hardon at the idea of being legally able to drink if I only had to pass a written exam testing my knowledge of alcohol). Since AFAIK we don't have any real, cost-effective test for whether a person has a prefrontal cortex, chronological age is a passable approximation.

I'm all for classical liberalism, but let's not be naive and throw common sense out the window - anyone who thinks 12-14 year olds should have the right to vote doesn't remember what it was like to be 12-14 years old. Christ, every single person who I respect and consider intelligent and knew when they were 12-14 would have voted for any candidate who promised that we would see boobies during their term in office.

ars• 17 years ago

What you wrote _sounds_ really good, and you got upvoted. The trouble is that it's not actually true.

The reason 12-14 years olds seem immature is a social one, and NOT a brain one. I come from a rather different social culture and in my social circle a 12-14 year old was more or less an adult - and we acted that way.

If you assume someone under 18 is a kid - they will act like a kid, if you assume they are an adult, they will act like an adult.

For every kid it was different, the range is about 12-15, but by then there were no longer any dramatic differences in maturity, and further changes are gradual and more importantly life long, i.e. the changes don't magically stop at 18.

By the traditional age of puberty (i.e. not todays accelerated age) all kids are mentally mature. But the social environment in the US isn't conducive to that, instead kids are told you are under 18 so act like a kid.

(And you got downvoted for saying kids don't have a pre-frontal cortex which is nonsense, if you had said less mature I would have let it go.)

And BTW my experience is supported by literature, at least based on an article I read about 2 years ago in 'scientific american mind' (which I tried to find but couldn't).

It's not accidental that the age of majority has crept up and up over the years. Basically people try to set the age so that everyone is mature by that point, but of course 95% of people are mature before that - but are told, don't bother. So they don't and the age creeps upward.

Repeat over the years and it keeps going up. In antiquity majority was 12, about 100 to 200 years ago it was 15. Today you find 25 years old living like teenagers used to.

omnivore• 17 years ago

I've always thought they should lower suffrage to kids who can drive, but...it's not going to happen.

ejs• 17 years ago

I have always believed that if you are forced to pay taxes then you must be given the right to vote. I thought it was incredulous that at 16 I was required to pay taxes yet unable to vote or influence where my money would go.

tocomment2• 17 years ago

I was mad that at 16 I could legally work but couldn't legally enter into contracts. This prevented me from having a bank account in my own name. I was old enough to work, but not old enough to own the money I earned. (At least not in non-cash form.) I also couldn't spend my own earned money on any products requiring a contract be signed. So old enough to work, but not old enough to spend or save the proceeds.

bokonist5• 17 years ago

You pay rent to your landlord, should you have the right to tell the landlord how to spend it? What is a government but a very big landlord?

azanar4• 17 years ago

Your assertion hinges on the assumption that the government exists autonomously, apart from the people it represents. If my landlord claimed to represent me and my interests with the money I gave him, I would expect to have a say in how he spent it. This is the charter of any non-totalitarian government, and specifically that of all of the modern democracies.

anamax3• 17 years ago

I've yet to run into a landlord who could force me to join the army, throw me in jail, take money from me, etc. The only thing that landlords can do is evict me for failing to pay an agreed upon amount of money, and I even get to refuse to deal with specific landlords if I don't like the deal.

azanar4• 17 years ago

I think your argument could go even deeper than that. If you are compelled to do anything by the State, I think you should argue quite effectively that the State should be compelled to take you and your concerns into account. Anything else creeps toward autocracy, at least against a particular group.

This provides you are of sufficiently sophisticated mental function to know what concerns you and why. When such sophistication develops is an incredibly hard question; thus far, we have punted, and have decided to use physical ages. This may be the least oppressive way to handle this dilemma, but the cynic in me wonders if we do this only because it is only optimal in a very short-term and fuzzy cost/benefit analysis.

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

"No taxation without representation."

I have vague recollections of a Tea Party thrown to discuss that one...

I agree with the principle of Scott's article (let's have a discussion and see if anything better shows up). Greater discussion may lead to better solutions like using taxation as the measure rather than a civics test.

bokonist5• 17 years ago

If you were running a company, would you give the same number of votes to newest hire in sales, as you would to the two founders? That would be insanity and would lead to a very dysfunctional company. No one would wish that management structure upon their worst competitor. But if you wouldn't run a company that way, why would you run a country that way?

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

hear hear. capitalism has been perverted by the mass media so that seeking profits is now considered a negative thing. but wait a minute, profit means that customers are buying what you're selling at the price you set. That means that your company is producing things people want. anti-capitalism is an impossible position. tantamount to saying you don't want people to produce things that you want.

whatusername• 17 years ago

If the kid has a part-time job - they have taxation without any form of representation - which has always seemed wrong to me.

discojesus4• 17 years ago

Anyone who's ever bought a Spiderman comic book as a child has been subject to sales tax without any form of representation. Should we therefore conclude that three-year-olds should be able to vote?

ahoyhere• 17 years ago

This past election was the first election in Austria in which 16-year-olds could vote.

All hell did not break loose.

The conservative candidate who actually reached out to the teens got more of their vote (surprise).

Of course, everyone's been angry with the liberals and socialists who did nothing but bicker until the coalition fell apart, so that may have something to do with it, too.

buugs• 17 years ago

But something that works for a multiparty system does not necessarily translate well to a system with less candidates (or viable candidates). To be honest it can be argued that obama would have won by a much larger margin in america given that 16/17 year olds could vote, and though this could probably show a good thing most people that age do not understand the government nor any policy action that would be put in place by there vote. At 18 there is already some trouble in my opinion especially seen by such ad campaigns as vote or die, or teenagers coming on tv saying I'm voting for so and so because they are more handsome etc.. you find this much less in older age groups.

bliving• 17 years ago

I know how this argument would go if only parents could decide!

Remember that the point is for "universal sufferage". While some youngsters may be responsible enough to vote, I wouldn't trust democracy to most of them.

jibiki• 17 years ago

Ok, would you trust democracy to those who could pass a civics test?

lionhearted2• 17 years ago

Interesting piece. It's been pretty clear to me that age doesn't maturity - having unique experiences in life causes maturity. The older you tend to get, the more unique experiences you tend to have. If you ever are fortunate enough to meet anyone who had to become a head of household at a young age, compare them against someone a few years older then them and see the results. When a boy or girl takes responsibility for younger siblings or a parent that can't function well as early as 14-16, they're a hell of a lot more mature at 18 than most people are at 25 when they're starting to get promoted out of entry level jobs. No doubt entrepreneurship, becoming a parent, traveling and/or immigrating, working, leading, managing, and so on add to maturity.

Regardless though, lowering the voting age won't make that much of a difference. The percent of young people that vote is already abysmal. Related note: Why don't we have a polling period that lasts at least a few days? Like Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday?

jackowayed• 17 years ago

It would cost almost 4x as much (let's say 3x as much because you don't quite need to accommodate as much volume at any one time), and elections already are pretty expensive.

It also would mean that every polling place would have to keep all of the records, ballots, etc. safe for longer. Imagine if polling places lost the records of who had voted already overnight.

lionhearted2• 17 years ago

Good call Jack - kind of obvious now that you mention it.

ja30278• 17 years ago

in a word: no. Rights and responsibility are 2 sides of the same coin. Since there isn't really a good test for responsibility (unless you're willing to have marriage or land ownership be qualifications for voting), then age is all we've got as a marker for responsibility. Probably unfair to a great many responsible children, but better than the alternative.

showerst2• 17 years ago

I'm not quite sure i agree with it, but it's worth at least thinking about the converse of this argument:

Perhaps we let too many people vote already? The average American isn't just a little uninformed, but is provably wrong about a number of issues, like what the government spends its money on, who holds the power to do various things, and the resources and governments of our neighbors. Heck, I'd bet that a non-zero percentage of voters don't even understand how the marginal tax rate works.

We don't let unqualified people fix our cars, work in our hospitals, or teach our kids, so why should they have the ability to make our political decisions?

Society has plenty of ways to accredit people to be 'knowledgeable' about these subjects (Basic civics test -> high school diploma -> college degree -> Degree in econ/poli sci -> masters -> phd, or perhaps business owners, workers in gov't service, etc).

We already treat voting as a privilege, not a right, (It can be taken away, as with felons) why not weight votes based on your investment in learning??

Obviously this plan is harebrained in that it would massively disadvantage everyone other than upper class white people, and probably lead to a civil war, but it's interesting to think that voting is probably the one place in society where are an objectively recognized expert in the field (I'm thinking more on the Econ side than the Poli Sci side) has exactly the same say as someone who just picks one at random.

The whole idea that some privileged group has the ability to say whether I can vote makes me a little uneasy, so personally I think I'd give a firm no to the idea.

If you're interested in the idea, the economist Bryan Caplan wrote a book called 'The Myth of the Rational Voter' that discusses the common fallacies and provides hard evidence. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691138737?tag=bryacaplwebp-20&...;

He also has the single ugliest web page that i've ever seen for an academic (a high bar indeed): http://www.bcaplan.com/

zacharypinter• 17 years ago

I like the idea of there being some sort of investment required for voting. Everybody interested in voting can, but there's a barrier to entry that helps people be informed voters or at least passionate about voting.

However, like you, I find it difficult to think of a non-corrupt test. You certainly don't want SAT scores to be a precondition for voting.

Perhaps in order to vote you have to get x (say 100) people to sign a petition for you? Of course, community leaders would quickly get a pool of 100 people to sign for whoever they wanted. You might be able to prevent that by limiting the number of petitions signed by a person in a given time span.

showerst2• 17 years ago

I'd think that you'd just be empowering big organizations (churches, unions, etc) that can just 'pass the sheet around' at a weekly meeting.

One way that I can think of to do it would be like so: Start a person at, say, 0.6 votes at 16. Voting in a state or national election = +.1/year, up to two times. Graduation High School or getting a GED = +.1.

So a motivated 18 year old has 1 vote, just like now, slackers are a little behind but not much.

Graduating College, OR 3 Years of Military Service, OR Passing a (Somewhat tough) Written Test of Govt/Econ/International Studies = +0.2

Graduate Degree OR 8 (total) Years of Military Service OR Passing a (LSAT Difficulty) Written Test = +0.2

Graduate Degree in Econ/<Whatever Gov't Applicable Majors> OR 2 Years Gov't Service = +0.1

So a college grad is worth +20% of a 'normal' adult, but twice a high-school dropout nonvoter who's put no effort into it. And someone with a PhD in Economics is only a third of a vote ahead of a college grad, but worth 1.5 18- year-olds, and 2.5 people who've never voted.

Hopefully by keeping the military/service side roughly equal, we could keep the ideological balance about the same.

Intelligent, Motivated non-traditional people, especially those too poor or busy for college could still get to the highest ranks without any cost other than proving that they understand the basics at rough parity.

You're going to get crackpots with degrees/credentials just like you do now, but I'd argue that as a whole, educated people make better decisions with respect to politics (even, I would go so far as to say, in a party agnostic way), so the bad eggs will cancel out.

I'm a voting, high-school educated college dropout myself, but I'd definitely go and learn whatever I would need for the highest level, even if it took a few hours a week for months/years, but I'm also unusually interested in the subject(s).

Once again, the idea is nuts and would never work in the current system, but there's nothing wrong with a little thought experiment =).

charlesju• 17 years ago

I think a better question is how can we send our "kids" to die for our country when they can't drink or gamble.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

That was the argument for lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. I wonder why drinking and gambling is still restricted to 21. From what I understand there is no federal law against it, but if states allow it then federal money is withheld from the states.

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

Heck, I don't think many adults should have the right to vote. Democracy is irrational enough as a decision-making mechanism as is.

There is tension between a hypothesized universal "right" of voting and the use of voting as a real-world method of choosing people to govern a country in a wise manner.

You see this tension when, for example, the ACLU advocates for restoring voting rights to violent felons. Personally I think violent felons have showed remarkably below-average decision making capabilities and I don't see why they should have a voice in running the country. However the ACLU seems to think that removing their voting rights is an affront to human dignity.

For many, democracy has become religion. It is no longer presented as a wise way to run a country. It is simply the unquestionable, universal, and only morally correct method of running a country. That's a dangerously inflexible stasis point for our thoughts to settle in, but that's where we are.

I prefer to avoid discussions that focus on the moral dimensions of voting. I would rather discuss how different government schemes are likely to effect society's well-being. I find these discussions to be much less predictable and more interesting.

Now, a voting test might be a good idea, and I would love to see it applied to adults too. Who knows, it might even elevate the level of political debate in this country to the point where candidates actually discuss substantive policy ideas. Of course, it would only last until an election cycle where women or a minority racial group had a lower than average pass rate, then it would be deemed "evil" and scrapped.

A disclaimer: I got halfway through and stopped when I ran into the giant pile of steaming kneejerk partisan assumptions (Oh look. A "George Bush is evil" quip. How original. Did it take a physicist to come up with that?). I'm bored and disgusted by this level of thinking, and I was somewhat surprised to see it from someone who argued so intelligently up to that point. So, if there is anything interesting after that segment, I missed it.

divia• 17 years ago

I agree that violent felons have shown below-average decision making capability, but as much as I don't necessarily want them having a voice in running the country, whether there are costs to not letting them do so seems to be at least an open question. There is a significant negative correlation between voting and recidivism (http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/...), though it's easy to see how the causation could run mostly in the opposite direction.

gojomo2• 17 years ago

I wouldn't mind an 'earned franchise' for children several years younger than 18, perhaps as young as 12. It could also be partial: only on a subset of offices (such as lower houses, city councils, and school boards).

And any problems from early voters being especially shallow or manipulated by others would be offset, in the long run, by, these same voters in their 20s already having a deeper understanding of the process. A 20something voter with 10+ years of perspective would be better than today's 20something voters.

But I would worry about the combination of public schools and voting children. The school itself would likely be a polling place, and the pressure to both vote and vote in ways the school establishment prefers would be very strong.

So I'd slot the 'teen franchise' somewhere a decade after 'diverse and mostly-privatized K-12 education' on the reform priority queue.

gojomo2• 17 years ago

Vaguely related: Newt Gingrich's ideas on 'ending adolescence':

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_45/b41070852...

I suppose if you're doing serious paid work -- even as an apprentice -- at age 13, you should also have a full civic franchise at the same time.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

screw that, lets take away the ability to vote from adults who act like children. The founding fathers didn't limit voting to white male landowners purely for racist sexist reasons. Landowners have a vested interest in the long term productivity of their region, as well as having shown themselves to be productive enough to get the land in the first place. On top of that, who is most affected by taxes? Producers and landowners again.

Should children have the right to vote?

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