Lower Voting Age

Shannon R Valentin | December 14, 2003
I NEED HELP ASAP, I AM DOING A REPORT FOR SCHOOL ON LOWER VOTING AGE. AAL I CAN SEEM TO FIND IS INFORMATION SUPPORTING THE TOPIC. WHAT I NEED IS INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE AGAINST THE IDEA. I'VE BEEN TRYING TO FIND HELP BUT HAVE CAME OUT EMPTY HANDED JUST ABOUT EVERY TIME. MY ROUGH DRAFT IS DUE MONDAY AND I'M STILL STURGGLING CAN YOU PLEASE,HELP ME I WOULD DEFANTLY APPRECIATE IT ALOT THANX.......SHANNON

Erik Bates | December 14, 2003
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | December 14, 2003
I wish you luck, Shannon. We discussed this back in April and hopefully that discussion will give you some ideas. The main reason for keeping the law is that a line has to be drawn somewhere, at some age, and right now that line is drawn at 18. If we lower it to 17, people will demand it be lowered to 16, and if we lowered it to 16, people would demand that it be 15, and so on. If you doubt it, observe that it has already happened: The voting age was 21 in this country for many years, but the 26th amendment was passed in 1971 to officially lower the voting age to 18. Some people will always be unhappy with the age limit, but it is reasonably fair, so it's best to leave it like it is.

If that sounds like a weak argument, it's probably because I'm very much in favor of lowering the voting age to 16, and I don't really know why it should be 18 instead. Like Matthew mentioned in the earlier discussion, most teens wouldn't bother to vote anyway, and those other few deserve the right.

Kris Weberg | December 15, 2003
Well, there was a genuinely good reason to drop the age to 18, of course -- the fact that 18-year-olds t the time were being drafted and sent to fight in a war but didn't get any say in the political process supporting that draft.