That’s the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the headline. I think that movie was on TV every six months or so when I was a kid.
“We’re gonna put everybody over 10 out of business.”
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Never, EVER, thought I’d defend Nixon. But. He let me vote (not that it helped any) Gave us the EPA too. Definitely not our worst Presiident I’ll let you guess who’s the worst one. And it wasn’t gay Buchanon. It wasn’t even W. (oddlly enough). Guess!!!
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All I can say is that I was working, paying tax and living in an apartment when I was 16 and I certainly considered myself capable voting.
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Because 16-year-olds are hormone riddled idiots who in reality don’t know their ass from their elbows.
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I expect most of the people seriously advocating this proposal were, like you, responsible, reflective, and informed when they were 16.
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Maybe the franchise should be extended to emancipated minors.
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My Mom’s Facebook feed respectfully disagrees.
My counterpoint to that is at the age of 22 I probably shouldn’t have had access to any of those things either but at least out of all of them I guess access to the ability to vote is probably the least dangerous.
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There’s no good argument against letting 16-year-olds vote
here’s one: r/the_donald
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The question over the age of majority has come up in a lot of conversation is my corner as of late. There seems to be this idea that there is a certain amount of development both physically and mentally one must acheive before one can process the consequences of their choices.
For sex, that’s 16 in most places, tobacco -18. A rifle can be bought at 18 and a handgun at 21 just in time for some booze. Voting happens at 18 and so does your opportunity to get trained to kill people for a living.
We need some uniformity here. Either make a rational facts based call on what age people are able to act and make choices as an adult or cut out age based prohibitions entirely.
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I like the proposal that the minimum voting age in every state be the same as the youngest person to be tried as an adult in that state.
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If we are generalising, so are 24 year olds.
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Not nearly as much as sixteen-year-olds.
I think legal adult-hood should be better defined in general so that there is a legal stake in the ground (even state-by-state) for what constitutes a legal adult - and then tie that to everything. This piecemeal standing built around giving maximized punishment and minimal benefit sucks and is basically justified by the 45-65 group hating teens.
It gets worse with the idea that parents are supposed to teach that group literally everything involved about being an adult with no other good education sources on how to do you taxes or even balance a checkbook.
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A tangent:
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Not to mention 30, 40, 50, 60, 70-year-olds. Don’t get me started on those 80 and over.
I think most 16-year-olds probably define themselves largely by propaganda of one form or another. But there’s a big question as to whether they will define themselves as for it or against it.
That gives us an idea of what would happen with younger people voting. Unsurprisingly they care less about social security. They don’t get the importance of supreme court appointments, apparently. On issues like gun policy and economy that chart basically tells us nothing because we know they care but not what they advocate for.
But kids sure care a lot more about bigotry than their elders.
So for people who want to push certain issues with voting age changes, there are certainly issues that could be pushed. I think the main issues you’d push with younger people voting would be gay and trans rights and ending the war on drugs (not shown here, but the generation gap on that one is enormous).
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18 is fine. But I do think Civics ought to be taught to juniors in high school, so it’s fresh. Here in Georgia, we take Civics in the 8th grade. By the time you’re old enough to put that municipal bond and appellate court arcana to use … you’ve totally forgotten all of it, and barely care.
High schools ought to have voter registration drives as part of the run-up to graduation (though I was only 17 when I graduated from high school).
Besides, everyone knows young people don’t vote. Adding 16 and 17 year-olds won’t change election results much. 
I do think barring 80+ year-olds from voting is an idea worth considering. I may feel differently in a few short decades, though.
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Was it Colbert’s recent monologue where he suggested that we reverse the voting age and only let people 18 and under vote?
I just look at the way that people are turning to traumatized high school students to lead the nation and wonder if what the point of adults is.
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because all choices to be made are equivalent, and our capacity to make a multitude of them in different contexts has a single determinative calendar based marker, set by and for the early bloomers among us?
I’d rather stick with analysis and bell curves and the average, not legislate for the edge scenarios or the special ones among us.
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