19 March, 2019
Speaker Pelosi’s proposal to extend the franchise to 16-year-olds has superficial merit even as it is deeply and fundamentally flawed.
It’s true that at 16 today a person is as likely to be aware of the latest in politics and have the same access to data as any 60-year-old, making us all as well informed as we are willing to be. Many at 16 and younger work and pay taxes, and the notion of “taxation without representation” is considered to be anathema to American traditions.
So why stop at 16? I’d much rather spend time with a 14 year old adult than a 40 year old child. People mature at different rates, and while many people at 16 or 19 lack the life experience or maturity to properly evaluate their vast body of knowledge, others are more capable. Voting is an awesome responsibility, often literally involving life and death questions, and age, as an arbitrary compromise, is a poor measure of maturity.
While neither a Democrat (in the sense of Cleveland, Carter, or Clinton) nor a democrat (in the sense of Marat, Marx, or Mao), I recognize that democracy is America’s national religion and I will address those predilections. Rather than the magic numbers of 16 or 18 or 21, I would repeal the 26th Amendment altogether and instead define other criteria: Citizenship (naturalized or “birthright” is a separate argument not relevant to this one), literacy in English (or the personal charm or financial wherewithal to coax or hire interpreters and advisors), and documented evidence of net tax-payer status (call it your “voter card” which you renew every decade perhaps, and surrender to get food stamps.)
For millennia, Jewish boys would declare on their 13th birthday that, “Today, I am a man.” They meant it and their families and communities believed it and they expected these newly minted men to act accordingly and mostly they did. “Teenagers” are a recent invention, the residue of capitalism and technology, but their minds have been stunted by decades of infantilization perpetrated by government schools and the welfare state.