Posted by Amanda Marcotte May 11, 2008 in Asides, Election
As a single, childless person who intends to stay that way, I have to come out strongly and self-interestedly against giving kids the right to vote. It sounds fair on its surface, but in practice, it’s just giving people extra votes because they have children, since children will vote for whoever they’re told to by their parents most of the time. Let’s face it—those scary men who insist on having 12 children to glorify their mighty cocks satisfy some bizarre religious requirement shouldn’t get 12 times as big a vote as someone like me.
I have nothing to add but my hearty agreement. Most kids would vote for whoever Mommy and Daddy do. And if children are unable to enter into contracts and such due to being unable to grasp all of the details yet, why on earth should they have voting power?
This doesn’t even necessarily privilege people with children (there’s a secret ballot, and juvenile/adolescent rebellion), it’s just stupid.
There is a kind of horrible american-ness to the notion that instead of working on getting the whole electorate to be well-informed, interested and in a position to make educated choices about candidates, someone is instead suggesting that the franchises be extended to all the uninformed and uninterested, not just adults…
Yeah, most parents know their kids well enough to know they’re lying. Liberal parents probably would use this as a chance to teach kids to think for themselves, but authoritarian conservatives would easily rationalize doubling, tripling or worse their vote through demands.
Who would ever think giving children the vote was a good idea? Someone might be able to argue convincingly for lowering the voting age to 16 or something, but letting eleven-year-olds vote? It’s absurd!
I was a really precocious child, and I didn’t get along very well with my parents, but I can tell you that I definitely would just have voted Republican all the way like my parents did. I just didn’t know any better. And I think I spent a lot more time reading books and newspapers than the average kid did.
Or what if a kid voted against his parents’ politics just to be petulant? I can totally envision a kid voting against gay marriage to piss off his liberal parents because they didn’t let him stay up late or something.
Luckily, I think this is an issue we don’t really have to worry about. It’s way too ridiculous to ever get any sort of widespread support. I mean, we were reluctant to give the vote to people under age 21 until people pointed out that you could be drafted and killed in war and have no political say in the matter.
Oh, please. Everyone votes for who their parents vote for. It’s the single strongest indicator of what political party you are. I vote for who my mommy and daddy do, because they taught me how to reason and what type of values to have. The same is true for the vast majority of people. And if you think giving young people the right to vote would help Republicans, you are almost certainly wrong. Little children aside for the moment, teenagers are an incredibly liberal group. One of the most liberal demographics on a wide variety of issues.
Anyway, I thought the suggestion that parents should actually be able to vote for their children was really stupid. But as long as you’re old enough to pull the lever, I think you should be allowed to go in there and do it. And no, I don’t think literacy tests are fair when applied to adults, and I don’t think they’d be fair applied to children either. If you need a poll worker to read the ballot to you, they are required to do so.
Oh, please. Everyone votes for who their parents vote for. It’s the single strongest indicator of what political party you are. I vote for who my mommy and daddy do, because they taught me how to reason and what type of values to have. The same is true for the vast majority of people. And if you think giving young people the right to vote would help Republicans, you are almost certainly wrong. Little children aside for the moment, teenagers are an incredibly liberal group. One of the most liberal demographics on a wide variety of issues.
Anyway, I thought the suggestion that parents should actually be able to vote for their children was really stupid. But as long as you’re old enough to pull the lever, I think you should be allowed to go in there and do it. And no, I don’t think literacy tests are fair when applied to adults, and I don’t think they’d be fair applied to children either. If you need a poll worker to read the ballot to you, they are required to do so.
Paul: There is no country where the majority of the electorate is educated about the issues in a way that is actually significant, and even the most educated have been shown to vote primarily on non-rational factors anyway. Voting isn’t done by super-educated geniuses, it is done by regular old people. A lot of whom are under the age of 18.
The reasonable arguments for it are:
1) Citing incompetence is a time-honored way to disenfranchise people unfairly, and has been used to keep the vote from women and black people.
2) There is no reason to think that your average 11-year-old’s vote is going to be worse than your average 50-year-old’s. Think of how many people voted for Bush in 2004. The older you got (until a certain point where the trend reversed) the dumber your vote got. We let people who think there’s something cute about burning Dixie Chick CDs vote. Most children are far more mature than that.
3) Children do pay the price, even disproportionately, for policy choices since they have to live with them longer. They should have a say.
4) If people start voting young, they vote for life. If children were encouraged to vote in school, that would set lifelong habits that are generally good.
I think these are good arguments, but very academic and not a one outweighs the fact that children cannot, by virtue of being dependents, cast a assuredly non-coerced vote.
Counterpoint:
The oldest of the Duggar offspring is already old enough to vote and may be just as brainwashed as the younger ones, and less brainwashed than normal kids of ages 16-17.
I still think that 16 should be the voting (and drinking, for that matter) age,but that it should be based on rights, not desired outcomes.
Oh, please. Everyone votes for who their parents vote for.
So my parents have been secretly voting Democrat all these years despite their vocal and financial support for Republicans? Because that’s the only way that their votes and mine coincide.
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with the argument that the voting age minimum should be abolished, and I’m undecided on how young I think it should be, but something struck me as very off with your argument against it. Frankly, it reminded me a bit too strongly of arguments against women getting the vote - that it would give married men an advantage because their wives would just vote how they were told. Just a gut reaction to the particular way you argued against it, I’m not completely unconvinced.
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with the argument that the voting age minimum should be abolished, and I’m undecided on how young I think it should be, but something struck me as very off with your argument against it. Frankly, it reminded me a bit too strongly of arguments against women getting the vote - that it would give married men an advantage because their wives would just vote how they were told. Just a gut reaction to the particular way you argued against it, I’m not completely unconvinced.
I could see maybe moving the voting age down to 15 or 16. Most older teens are of an age where they are able to understand that their parents can’t tell them who to vote for. 15 year olds sneak around, do things their parents told them not to, etc — even the well-programmed ones. By 16 or so, if you’re going to rebel, you’ll have already rebelled, whereas if you’re going to be a mold of your parents you’re probably not going to wake up on your 18th birthday and do a complete 180.
I’ll also say that I didn’t wake up at age 18 and decide “OK, I’m of age to vote, I guess I should start caring about politics…” It really took the outside shove of the stolen election (when I was 19), Bush’s response to 9/11, and the war in Iraq to get me thinking about politics in any realistic way. It’s entirely possible that, in a bizarro-world Gore Administration universe, I still wouldn’t be politicized enough to actually show up and vote.
But 12 year olds? You can tell from American Idol voting patterns that we DO NOT want preteens in politics.
Yeah, I would say that I’d be surprised to find out my parents vote for Democrats generally. Because your parents’ party is the greatest indicator doesn’t mean as much as you might think—elections are swung on the margins, so if 65% of people vote like their parents, then that leaves another 35% that can really change everything if they want. And while a 16-year-old might have more intelligence about voting than an 18-year-old next door, overall, that doesn’t change the fact that for most of a minor’s life, the vote would be coerced by definition. A 5-year-old is going to vote how she’s told, and not really understand too well why not.
It sounds fair on its surface, but in practice, it’s just giving people extra votes because they have children, since children will vote for whoever they’re told to by their parents most of the time.
Should we take away the vote from the developmentally disabled adults and from dependent elders? Brain-damaged veterans? How about women that we judge to be in overly patriarchal relationships?
I don’t think kids should vote for reasons of developmental maturity - I just take strong issue with the reasoning you (Amanda) are employing to say that they should not. Such “logic” could be used to strip a wide range of people of their franchise based on their perceived dependency.
But 12 year olds? You can tell from American Idol voting patterns that we DO NOT want preteens in politics.
Overgeneralize Much? I wonder what I could say about “people your age” based on pop culture interaction.
You haven’t met my 12 year old.
The kid who, when asked what he wanted to do for his 7th birthday said “I want to go to the peace protests in New York City”.
The kid who, at age 8, was cleaning his room and strolled out with a giant flag sticker plastered over his mouth.
The kid who, after his first day of kindergarten, referred to the Pledge of Allegiance as “the Flag Prayer”.
The kid who overheard a news report about Diebold and said “Well what do you expect - their name is half of diabolical already”.
The kid who named Michael Moore as his hero when asked in class this year, and sneaks out of bed to watch the Daily Show, and digs up Olbermann oratories on the web.
I know that he really isn’t typical in many, many ways. I just want to point out that there are 12 year olds who don’t necessarily share their parents’ opinions and who are better informed than many in our society, and possibly even me.
Maybe kids could be granted voting rights if they earned 90 or better on a test about The System, similar to what immigrants do to gain citizenship.
That way, Ms Kate’s kid could vote
I did a call-in vote to Nickelodeon’s “Kids Pick the President” in ‘88 and ‘92. In ‘88 I voted for Bush, definitely against my parents’ politics, for no reason I could articulate — I recall my parents asking my why I’d made that choice, and I think my answer was something like, “I think he’ll be good.” I was 6 at the time. The next time elections rolled around, I had some idea about issues. I voted Clinton. Incidentally, Nick’s Kids Pick accurately predicted the prez every year until Bush/Kerry. That’s usually attributed to the fact that their demographic votes the way mom and dad do. (in the interests of accuracy: 2000 went for Bush, so depending on your view of who ‘won’ that election…)
We did an informal survey of the room in one of my modern history classes in college — first moment of political awareness. In a room full of people born in ‘81-’85, the most common answers were the Gulf War/Desert Storm, the WTC bombing, and the ‘92 election. All consistently about 10 years old to be aware of wider considerations. So 10 to even think about voting, and then how much longer to understand the issues? Let’s just stick with 18, folks.
Terrific idea about abolishing the voting age. While we’re at it we should also abolish the drinking age, driving age, any distinctions between adult and juvenile crimes, age of consent for entering contracts, etc. Let’s not be half-assed about it.
Yes, the voting age, not to mention the other age barriers, can be seen as arbitrary, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. I can see where some 16 year olds might be better informed and more qualified to vote than some 18 (or 21, 40, 65) year olds, and maybe someone can make a compelling enough argument to lower the voting age to, say, 16. But abolishing the voting age entirely is just nuts. There are always going to be some outliers, but short of instituting some sort of test to decide who is mature enough to vote, I don’t see any viable alternative to using age as the deciding factor in who is eligible to vote.
Voting for class president in junior high is one thing (mostly a popularity contest from what I remember), but voting for a public office or state constitutional amendments is quite different. I doubt that there are very many junior high kids who are mature enough to vote for anything more important than prom queen/king. And it only gets worse as they get younger. How capable is an infant in making any decisions, much less something that requires capabilities it won’t have for many years? And let’s not even get into the anti-choicers inevitable argument that a fetus should have voting rights too.
Ms. Kate: While I’m sure your kid would be exceptionally responsible in terms of guiding the process of democracy, there’s a reason such children are known to be not typical.
I don’t think keeping children, who will eventually reach voting age, from voting until they are capable of full understanding is such a violation and slippery slope.
We have Ms Kate’s 12-year old on the one hand, and George W. Bush (60+) on the other.
One of them is a solid, thoughtful citizen looking ahead to solving the problems we face in our future.
The other one is a disgrace.
And, of course, which one is “leader of the free world”?
We would have been much better off with Ms Kate’s son in office…
“We would have been much better off with Ms Kate’s son in office…”
Not to damn with faint praise, but either of Kevin Drum’s cats would have done a better job. Or Amanda’s. Or Atrios’.
Even that weiner dog of Oliver Willis’.
in practice, it’s just giving people extra votes because they have children, since children will vote for whoever they’re told to by their parents most of the time
I just need to point out that pretty much the same argument was used to disenfranchise women: that they would vote how their husbands told them.
As someone who may or may not yet have children, I believe there’s a serious argument for lowering the voting age to at least sixteen (if we allow kids to drive . . .). Educators like John Holt have made arguments for lowering it even further, which I think should be taken seriously (though I don’t necessarily agree). Children’s rights are not about privileging parents–they’re about treating children as human beings.
You should spend more time with your precious and perfect offspring. Oohhh my wittle is sooo much brighter than yours and sooo much more mature. Crap. You see what you want to.
18 is a fine age as you, if you are male, can be drafted into the armed services and die. It also serves as a handy legal fiction when horny teens procreate.
Truthfully, most kids are pretty ready at 18 to start making their own mistakes. Voting for idiots is only one.
What a stupid idea. When I was 10 I could barely dress myself.
Anna, was it? Do you have evidence? Because from what I understand, the fear was that women would actually vote differently than men. In fact, most of the jokes around the time were about the danger of giving women power over men to say, ban alcohol.
I’m dubious of the idea that parents are always going to be able to tell when their kids were lying. That wasn’t true in my childhood, near as I can tell. That said, I probably would limit underage voting to secret ballot (if potentially secret ballot ahead of time), I do think mail-ins would probably be way too easy to coerce.
Anyways, a city in my area, Takoma Park, MD. has dropped the age down to 14 for local races. That’s admittedly not 11, but it makes a pretty good way to experiment with this kind of thing.
A nice thing about outrageous proposals like this is that they get people talking about less drastic measures they would support.
Seems a lot of people are open to the idea of letting 16 year olds vote. Let’s do it. The opoponax makes a convincing point that also addresses the possibility of coercion:
By 16 or so, if you’re going to rebel, you’ll have already rebelled, whereas if you’re going to be a mold of your parents you’re probably not going to wake up on your 18th birthday and do a complete 180.
Any state that chooses can lower the voting age. The Federal rules only say that 18-year-olds must be allowed to vote, not that 17-year-olds can’t. But the states that do have a lot of children don’t have an incentive to do so, since census data determines representation and having more voters decide things isn’t as desirable as it is for the current voters to decide things.
“Should we take away the vote from the developmentally disabled adults and from dependent elders? Brain-damaged veterans?”
Don’t you usually have to affirm that you haven’t been found mentally incompetent in order to vote? The last time I had to fill out a registration form, that one was on there alongside the affirmation of non-feloniousness and the affirmation of citizenship. It’s not a given that a developmentally disabled adult, dependent elder, or vet with TBI will automatically fail that requirement, but we do recognize at least some limits for otherwise-qualified adults based on cognitive and decision-making ability.
Are there any states which allow minors to vote in local elections? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that there might be, given how many states allowed women to vote in state and local elections before they had the right to vote in federal elections.
“Overgeneralize Much? I wonder what I could say about “people your age” based on pop culture interaction.
You haven’t met my 12 year old.”
Shorter: “Not MY Nigel!”
Maybe you should think about the meaning of “OVERgeneralize” before you trot out your angel and put him through his Progressive Compulsories. ::eyeroll::
I am ALL FOR THIS!!!
Imagine the national budget will look like. I LOVE Christmas!
Lesse…
1. invest in video game industry (as oppose to car and utility sector)
2. Television will be THAT much more interesting. Instead of bobble head, we gonna see much more cheerful commercial.
3. School lunch will DEFINITELY improve.
4. We will land on mars and playing golf, instead of invading Iraq and killing arabs.
5. adult politicians will actually have to answer difficult questions such as : “why do we go to war”?
I am ALL FOR it. Imagine how frantic the so called “adult” when the kids are IM-ing each other and turning into a giant voting blog online.
but than again, the flame war across the net will look nothing like bunch of blog post. It’ll be nasty script kiddies blowing up servers.
I think the voting age should be lowered to 14 or 16, and maybe require a civics/contemporary issues type class for school children at the appropriate age. I have vivid memories of being 17.5 in 2000 and being well informed about the candidates and the issues, but not being able to vote. And kids my age DEFINITELY paid for Bush’s policies. And will likely be literally paying for them for the rest of our lives. I wish I could at least be able to say “I should have voted for Gore.”
It’s also true that plenty of uneducated or unthoughtful people are coerced into voting like their parent, husband or friends do, why exclude children? My parents vote republican, and my 16-year-old sister is all about gay rights and feminism. She would probably vote Obama.
” since children will vote for whoever they’re told to by their parents most of the time. ”
Amanda was obviously a nice kid.
I for one rewired my house electricity .. lol.
My kids already vote. I vote by absentee ballot and we discuss the issues and then they fill in the ballot. I definitely think we should let them vote. It’s most often their wallet we are stealing from, and their bodies we will be sending to war or injecting with unproven, dangerous vaccines like gardasil.
and maybe require a civics/contemporary issues type class for school children at the appropriate age.
Ha ha! Poll taxes and literary tests are next!
I think these are good arguments, but very academic and not a one outweighs the fact that children cannot, by virtue of being dependents, cast a assuredly non-coerced vote.
Hey, I’m pro-choice but what you are saying sounds like an argument for parental notification….
children will vote for whoever they’re told to by their parents most of the time
You all do know that this is the same argument that was made against giving women the vote, right?
Amanda, c’mon. Don’t play the game of “If I say so it’s evidence, but if you disagree with me, you gotta offer proof or you’re wrong and I’m right.” And as you have pointed out yourself many times, sexists have no problem throwing out contradictory arguments as long as the end result leads to Bitches Shut Up.
Remember that part of the argument against giving women the vote was couverture: women didn’t need to vote because their husband voted, and the law saw a womea’s civil existence as subsumed into her husband’s. He voted for two, y’know. So there’s no reason sexists had any problem arguing BOTH that it would be disastrous (what if she voted differently? it would destroy the unity of husband and wife!) and pointless (but she would just do what her husband told her, so it’d be vote x2 for married men).
That said, while I agree that there ought to be an age of majority and votes-for-tots is dumb, the notion that kids all do whatever their parents tell them…..let’s just say you didn’t need to announce you don’t have kids if you can say THAT with a straight face.
Oh, and it was particularly cute to pick Mother’s Day to turn a well-meant, if dumb, idea about empowering children into a sneer about those greedy, grasping breeder-cows. It’s okay, we all know you’re too cool to spawn.
I don’t think I really understand the people saying that the argument against kids voting is similar to the argument used against women voting. The reason it was ridiculous to make that argument against women voting is that women are adults who can make informed decisions. Children aren’t.
Yes, some children are very intelligent and a few are politically knowledgeable, but can’t we all acknowledge that most children are incapable of making most decisions? Isn’t that why it’s bad to, say, have sex with an eleven-year-old? Because an eleven-year-old isn’t capable of making an informed, mature decision about sex? And if an eleven-year-old isn’t capable of making a responsible choice about their own body and life, why would we assume they could make informed, mature decisions about the way the country is run?
We can argue about the cutoff age for responsible decision-making, and I’m sure it varies from individual child to individual child, but comparing denying children the vote to denying women the vote seems a little absurd to me.
I’m not sure if the law has changed, or if this is state-by-state. I turned 18 a few days after the primary election in my state in 1992 and therefore couldn’t vote in it. (Irrelevant fact: I was born on election day in 1974 and it was the only time ever that either of my parents didn’t vote. They were a little busy that day.) So my first election was the 1992 general election, when I excitedly voted for Bill Clinton, after spending most of the years of which I had a clear memory with either Reagan or Bush I in office.
The students I work with now operate under a different rule. I live and work in a different state than the one in which I grew up. If they will be 18 on the day of the general election, they can also vote in the primary. So in February, most of my 17-year-old students were voting, and were very excited. They were all VERY open about voting for Obama.
Teens get pretty excited about the political process. At least I was, and the ones I work with now are. I’d lower the age to 16 or 17. Having spent the past nine years working with students ages 11-19, I would say the change in maturity for most of them comes around 16. That’s the age when we let them learn to drive in most states. In many countries it’s the age when they are allowed to be in a bar. I think I would probably make the age of majority for everything 17: drinking, voting, VOLUNTARY military service, buying cigarettes. 18 is not a magical age where we develop critical thinking skills. Recent research says it’s really the early twenties, but I also can’t see prolonging adolescence that long either. I think 17-year-olds are mature enough to make voting decisions. My students had no less reason for their choice of candidate than anyone else I know, and in fact, a lot of them had much better reason. It was a 40-year-old who said to me that she wasn’t voting for a black man for president because she thought he’d be assassinated, and that she thought he couldn’t win the general anyway because there was still too much racism in this country (which she was doing a nice job of perpetuating, I thought). The 17-year-olds don’t say a world about race or about fear . They’re excited about his message. Me, I’m a little more jaded. I was excited like that in 1992 with Bill and Hillary and Chelsea there at the convention all holding hands and “Don’t Stop” playing in the background. But I love seeing them excited, and I’d love to have a whole bunch more of them out there voting for Obama since it certainly looks like he’ll be the Democratic nominee. (Yes, I voted for Clinton in the primary, and no, I’m not an idiot who is going to stay home in protest because my favorite candidate didn’t get the nomination. I have no problem with Obama as president either. I just preferred Clinton.)
We can argue about the cutoff age for responsible decision-making, and I’m sure it varies from individual child to individual child, but comparing denying children the vote to denying women the vote seems a little absurd to me.
I agree, but after agreeing with that, I don’t see how the same reasoning does not support parental notification laws….
Well, at least having procreated, while I might not get to cast additional ballots for my children, I was able to get those neat $1,000 per child tax credits, along with the personal exemptions!
And while the parents’ party identification is the strongest indicator of what their children’s party ID will be, that’s not the same thing as saying that they vote the same way. You have to factor in an entire generation’s worth of age differences into the latter, as well as marital status, income and a range of other things.
I think the most logical argument for lowering voting age:
It alter political dynamics. Imagine the pandering politicians has to balance between persuading 16 yrs old to vote for them (to go to war), vs. 70 yrs old upper east side resident who wants to go to war.
If a person is old enough to go be drafted to go to war or have kids, that person should have full political right. I am quite serious about “serious question” to the so called “adult, politician.
Obviously, 11 yrs old won’t be able to decide, since most barely finish basic education and probably not that concerned about larger social interest.
But lowering voting age by few years I think is healthy. (If not only to force the nation to start worrying about education quality and voters awareness.)
If we let 90 yrs old racist senile to keep voting, why not let 16 yrs old vote. They hold the future. I am sure they want a voice in it.
It re-balances national worldview.
note: Obama strength as this election shows, is to reach out to new voters. The first timers. They turned out to be pretty bright and responsible group.
It’s the damned corrupt status quo who thinks they know better for the nation that always screwed people!
Dana May 11, 2008 at 8:22 pm
And while the parents’ party identification is the strongest indicator of what their children’s party ID will be, that’s not the same thing as saying that they vote the same way. You have to factor in an entire generation’s worth of age differences into the latter, as well as marital status, income and a range of other things.
Time changes. Education quality, information quantity, new channel of communications,… all these accelerate a person ability to decide specially the one with younger brain. A person growing up in 60’s has significantly different outlook analyzing political event than a person who grows up in the 90’s.
I mean, larger “campaigning” are pure pandering and identity politics anyway.
Eric, get stuffed or learn to read and follow a thread. The point wasn’t that all kids or even my kid is ready to vote at 12.
The point was to refute the extreme overgeneralization that ALL 12 year olds are uninformed pawns of their parents.
Overgeneralization is NEVER OUR FRIEND. Then again, what do I expect from some conformist poser who is “rejector of memes”. All people your age certainly must think that they are such trendy hip contrarians even when that itself is conformist, right?
So, to recap: People used to argue that women shouldn’t vote because women are like children. Therefore, arguing that children shouldn’t vote because children really are children is specious in exactly the same way. Because women really are like children, and only a childfree hipster would think otherwise.
Have I got it?
I don’t think it really matters as a whole, therefore, I think kids *of any age* should be allowed to vote.
In the end, as I grow older, I find, more and more, that adults are, most of the time, merely grown up children. We literally cannot harm the decision-making capacity of the public more with adding actual children to the mix.
Now, to a certain extent, I’m thinking of Justina Robson’s Keeping It Real series where a setting, Demonia, is ruled by the children (and I do believe she’s making a point!), and I think so because, unlike some people, I do interact with children on a more or less regular basis. They are rational agents. They just don’t have experience. And it’s perfectly appropriate to allow children to decide whether or not they are ready to make a decision on who should run their communities. As to coercion, I believe that there are very few people who are not subject to coercion, which is why we have secret ballots. And this fear of coercion has always been used as a cover for fear that someone, somewheres will vote “wrong”. After all, your guy is always good, and the policy is always salutory…
I think it would be interesting, given the various minority subcultures that children participate in, given that they are typically not directly influenced by monetary issue. Reaching this demographic for advertising and GOTV purposes would have interesting challenges.
Lastly, we pretend that children are rational agents when it comes to commercial situations so businesses can use them to suck out the cash from their parents. 120 years ago, merchants did the same with women wrt to the husband’s line of credit, regardless of whether the husband approved. Really, why should it be any different now? Your green is good but not your opinion, even though both are more or less the same thing?
I agree that enfranchising children is a ridiculous idea.
However, I would like to present my 7-year-old Hillary supporter as a counterexample to the theory that children will simply support whomever their parents tell them to support. She is an unashamed one-issue voter and wants to support the girl candidate. Her younger sister is also a Hillary supporter, but in her case, I think she is simply savvy enough not to argue with the larger, heavier person who sleeps in the same room she does.
Molly tried really hard to convince me and my husband to support Hillary, and since we live in a caucus state, we couldn’t even just ditch her outside the voting booth.
(And I think that in general you are correct: most kids would vote as instructed by the large, powerful people who provide their food and shelter.)
And it’s perfectly appropriate to allow children to decide whether or not they are ready to make a decision on who should run their communities.
The people who most directly run children’s communities are, of course, their parents and their teachers. Bearing this well in mind, I’m inclined to agree with you.
I have to wonder, though, how many of the parents of special wonderful children who totally deserve to vote in national elections actually support enfranchising and empowering their children this directly. It’s all very well to allow your kid to pick the president, but allowing her to select, hire and fire her own direct governing authority figures? I think that will be a slightly different story. Although it really shouldn’t be.
families aren’t run by democracies. Some families are more democratic than others, while others are more authortarian.
There are no democracies in the military or in any other highly corporate environment either. Outside of unions, you don’t hear about any adults saying we should democritize those organizations, do you?
Talking about voting in or out parents and teachers is a sophomoric means to engage the id.
We are talking about civic taxes and civic responsibilities.
Children pay taxes. Children are responsible for the debts of their societies. Children have to obey many laws with no distinctions about juvenile status, and even that is limited to little white boys since little girls and little minorities are often as harshly as comparable adults. In that respect, it’s simply not a large leap to say geez, we probably *should* let them vote, as a block if they can, for politicians to pay attention to their needs.
In my country the fear was that women would vote what their priests and confessors would tell them to, which was pretty accurate since the right wing coalition won the elections the first time women were allowed to vote.
Once they were aware of the consequences of voting such coalition, though, they were ready to ditch their ministers and bible-thumpers. One can only learn from the mistakes.
Society has two groups of people who largely rely on social and political institutions for their care and well being–children and the elderly. There’s a *huge* gap in the care, effort, and dollars we put into these two groups, to the very real detriment of the former. They less likely to have health care and more likely to live in poverty. Voting is, amongst other things, a form of self-defense, and we deny them this most basic form of it. I certainly agree there are practical problems involved with children voting, and perhaps we shouldn’t just jump in feet first (I’d certainly give the vote to teens, at least 15 and up, immediately, though).
families aren’t run by democracies.
Oh, but families that don’t include children certainly are, quite often, if they’re healthy. Mine is. What happened to women and children being functionally equivalent?
Let me put it another way. Why aren’t families democracies, in your experience and in your opinion?
There are no democracies in the military
And we have a volunteer military, which is why we accept that. And we all hate the draft. Kids don’t enlist in their families.
Talking about voting in or out parents and teachers is a sophomoric means to engage the id.
So: What goes on behind closed doors isn’t a political matter. Children don’t get any say over who exerts moral and physical control over them, and you say that’s as it should be.
But they should totally get to vote.
This shouldn’t be news, but: Children have a keen eye for hypocrisy, and a deep love of pointing out unfairness. Children also have a strong attraction to sophomoric debating tactics. You do the math.
This is just anecdotiness, but my family can’t be THAT weird (maybe):
My mother voted as my father told her to until 1970. Both my grandmothers voted as my grandfathers told them to until the days they died.
My MIL voted as my FIL told her to until 1982. Both of DH’s grandmothers voted as his grandfathers told them to until the days they died. Plus, one grandmother and grandfather just voted as their parish priest told them to.
Certainly, this doesn’t mean they should not have been allowed to vote, it just illustrates the power of the patriarchy.
Arguing a particular age for voting/drinking/whatever rights is pointless. Any age will be arbitrary because all kids are different and mature at different times. There are many “adults” who shouldn’t be voting because they are just filling in a box or pulling a handle without any knowledge of what they’re voting for. And how would I explain a bond issue to some kid (not Kate’s kid, obviously)? Sometimes I have to read them three or four times to get to what they are really about due to tricky wording and I always have to take a cheat sheet with me into the voting booth.
That said, perhaps if children could vote, school and library funding bonds would pass more often, and military spending might be curtailed.
If I were forced to pick an arbitrary age, I would probably say sixteen.
Talking about voting in or out parents and teachers is a sophomoric means to engage the id.
I should add that there have been, I believe, several cooperative private schools that did/do indeed have the student body or representatives thereof interview and vote on new teacher hires. I hear it encourages an increased sense of involvement in their school community and pride in their own decision-making capacity. But you are of course free to continue to dismiss the idea as ridiculous.
Your dismissal makes it painfully clear that support for children’s voting rights has nothing at all to do with real respect for their developing autonomy and mental maturity, but that’s no surprise.
Sophonisba, are you purposely missing the point about taxation and representation? Not to mention using arguments that have prevented women from suffrage rights for far too long.
Yup, you’re being sophomoric.
P.S. Volunteer military has nuttin’ to do with nuttin’. Ask any soldier from any country with an effective military, volunteer or not.
Mythago, seriously, wtf? All she says is that she’s single, childless, and planning to stay that way. How on earth can anyone read that as “a sneer about those greedy, grasping breeder-cows” in your words? Defensive much?
I’m also single and childless and have no plans to change that. Are you going to assume that I sneer at married parents? I’m also a civilian and definetely planning to stay that way- will you read that as an attack on military people?
okay, seeing that next response really drives me batty. That’s pretty damn classic wingnut thinking.
So it’s clear that further discussion is useless, but allow me one rebuttal.
Whether children should vote for parents or teachers is not germane to the topic. School boards, yes. Mayors, yes. The county dog catcher even. But teachers are not elected by the people at large, nor are parents, and students certainly do not typically pay taxes to their parents. Parents and teachers are neither here nor there, and I took your line as an attempt to derail the conversation by using ant-heirarchal imagery.
now, play with some other idiot willing to play with a wingnut.
if an eleven-year-old isn’t capable of making a responsible choice about their own body and life, why would we assume they could make informed, mature decisions about the way the country is run?
We accept that people are capable of handling different adult challenges at different times. The age of consent is different from the driving age, which is different from the voting age, which is different from the drinking age, which is different from the age at which Hertz will let you rent a car. Some of us may feel that one or more of those cut-offs is set at the wrong age, but how many would say they should all, as a matter of principle, be the same?
Voting is low-risk behavior. If you, as an individual, get it wrong, the cost to yourself and society is (barring really rare exceptions) zero. And in fact, it hardly makes sense to speak of getting it wrong — there’s no voting equivalent to wrapping your car around a tree.
I don’t think it makes sense, except as a thought experiment, to enfranchise small children. But I haven’t heard a cogent argument in this thread against lowering the voting age to, say, 12 or 15. The only real risk is coercion, and if kids are going into the voting booth by themselves, that strikes me as a low risk.
There seems to be a practical fear that kid voting would give a boost to Republicans, but even if dynamics in authoritarian families tended to push things that way, the Dems’ advantage in youth identification would be a counterweight, I’d guess. Put it this way — if the voting age were lowered to 12 for this November, is there any doubt that that would help Obama?
When I was 16, George W Bush got elected into office. I voted for him in our all-school election, because abortion kills babies and it annoyed people.
When I was 18, I would have changed my vote. For me, my real political understanding happened when I hit the real world- college, where my world-view expanded.
I don’t know that this will apply to all young people, but I do think that there is a large amount of children who will over-identify with the precious little babies being aborted- there are certainly a lot of children in the anti-choice movement as is.
Could I offer a suggestion from outside the US? Why not work on getting a greater proportion of your already eligible-to-vote population actually *voting*, rather than attempting to boost the numbers of eligible voters by lowering the voting age?
I’ll point to the Australian system, because it’s the one I’m familiar with. We have a legal requirement that at each Federal and State election, all persons who are eligible to fill in a ballot paper have to turn up and receive one. The elections are held on Saturdays (another legal requirement, since the polling places are usually schools, and they’re currently not being used on Saturdays) and most primary and high schools in an electoral area are turned into polling places, staffed by people who are working for the Australian Electoral Commission (a government body charged with organising all matters electoral - boundaries, voter registration, and running the actual election process). It is a requirement for each Australian voter who is eligible to vote in the election to turn up at their nearest polling place, and receive their ballot papers.
After you’ve received the ballot paper, you can do anything you damn well please with it. Fold it into origami, eat the silly thing, write a long screed on all the vacant spaces about the nature of the Australian political system and the flaws thereof; heck, you can even fill in a valid vote. Do what you like to it, but remember to fold it up and drop it into the ballot box, and you’ve done your duty as a citizen. Congratulations, you can now go back to sleep for another three years.
Oddly enough, I figure it makes our elections a bit *more* democratic than yours. At least when we’re voting, we know everyone else in the state or country is doing so, and we wind up with a decent consensus of opinion. The spoiled ballot, or informal vote ratio is pretty low, too. Under 4% of the Australian voting population voted informally in the 2007 Federal election (highest was in NSW, with 4.95%; lowest was in the ACT, with 2.31%). This means the election of our members of parliament was achieved through the polling of the preferences of at least 95% of the population of each state and territory (oh, and there was a national *reduction* in informal voting of 1.23%).
By contrast, I believe the proportion of your voter population who actually bothered to turn out in 2004 was something like 40%. This means George Bush was actually *voted for* by about 20% of your voter population. Over here, the support of 20% of electors wouldn’t even get him into the running for the seat he was contesting. Over there, it got him a second shot at the presidency.
sophonisba wrote:
Believe me, there was no democracy in the military when we did have a draft.!
As someone who doesn’t plan on having kids, and who doesn’t have a terribly inflated view of children’s capacity for reason, I have to say that nothing in this thread has made a very compelling case for why children should be denied the franchise. On a practical level: Adult American voters do not make very good decisions, and I am not at all convinced that children would do any worse. On an abstract level, there is simply no excuse to deny them this basic human right.
Any of the arguments here apply equally, as many have pointed out, to other groups: mentally retarded adults, women living in oppressive marriages, etc. Anyone living in the US should be able to vote if they are physically capable of it, including children, temporary foreign workers, etc. It is just, and it couldn’t possibly result in outcomes worse than the current ones.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the people who get treated the worst in our country are the ones denied the vote: e.g. children, felons, immigrants. (And if you have any doubt as to whether children’s actual rights are almost entirely disregarded in this country, you are desperately in need of some perspective.)
So what? Most of these kids won’t be able to get valid voter ID & will be disenfranchized anyway.
Mythago, seriously, wtf? All she says is that she’s single, childless, and planning to stay that way. How on earth can anyone read that as “a sneer about those greedy, grasping breeder-cows” in your words? Defensive much?
Rob W., please see the actual title of the post. Thank you.
I’m not convinced by this argument. As Brooklynite pointed out above, we have private voting booths for a reason. If you’re worried about reprisal, you don’t have to tell anyone who you actually voted for.
The arguments against this boil down to “Children’s votes will be influenced by their parents or other important people in their life.” That’s true for people of every age.
I also don’t have enough information to agree or disagree with the idea that giving kids the vote would swing more power towards parents. I don’t have any data, only my personal experience, but kids can be pretty contrarian. My 10 year old cousin in NJ became a big Red Sox fan, mainly because her parents were Yankees fans.
You all do know that this is the same argument that was made against giving women the vote, right?
Once again, everything I’ve read seems to suggest men were afraid women would vote differently. Who cares if women vote the same as men? Then that would mean that nothing would change because men and women are in even numbers.
Not so with children. No one should not be allowed to have 3 votes while I get one because she has two children.
If you’re reading sneering into the post title, there’s not much I can do to help you. Suggesting that someone shouldn’t have extra privileges=/hating them. I don’t think men should have more rights than women. Does that mean I hate men?
Oh, and it was particularly cute to pick Mother’s Day to turn a well-meant, if dumb, idea about empowering children into a sneer about those greedy, grasping breeder-cows.
Please find where I said, “You shouldn’t get three times the vote than me because you’re a ‘breeder cow’.” If I called you or anyone a breeder cow, I apologize. Luckily, I didn’t. I’m sorry if my personal choice not to have kids offends people. Your personal choice to have kids doesn’t offend me. I’m perfectly secure enough in my choices that people making different ones doesn’t cause me to make wild accusations that they harbor secret hate for me.
I simply said you shouldn’t have more votes than me. By the logic that this is “breeder” hating, then by declaring that women should have the vote, I hate men, because I’m saying they don’t deserve more votes than women.
I think it’s important to note that the OP Amanda linked to didn’t say “lower the age of enfranchisement.” It said “abolish the voting age.”
My neocon friend who has three kids under the age of 8, just to take the most obvious example, is not covered under the “teenagers rebel against their parents” clause of this argument.
For some reason I was under the impression that privilege, or at least the free and unexamined exercise thereof, was seen as a negative around these parts.
I don’t think lowering the voting age to 16 or something is the worst idea. The benefit of getting kids into the habit of voting before they’re out of the house would outweigh the drawbacks, I’d think. Except the push to vote in the high schools might be limited to wealthier neighborhoods.
My concern about giving the children of wealth more privileges than poorer kids shows that I am seething with hatred for the wealthy, by the way.
Sometimes, when I’m riding my bike peacefully around, I will encounter SUV drivers who are offended at my very existence. I do not ride my bike in a sanctimonious manner, like the people who pull out in front of cars and make everyone behind them drive at 10 mph. I don’t have flashy gear or bumper stickers advertising my moral superiority. For all anyone knows, this is the one time a year I bicycle. But somehow my very existence on a bike strikes some anger chord in some SUV drivers—that bitch is judging us!—and I get the finger or some aggressive unsafe driving in my vicinity.
I have no idea why that popped into mind.
except one has to realize…
Children who are truly too young to vote will automatically exclude themselves…They’d spoil the ballot.
It’s a fallacy to assume that anyone will do exactly as their patron ask, given society as a whole, and a secret ballot.
For every child who would vote as instructed, you probably can find an adult who does the same. You also can find a child that votes the he or she genuinely thinks. Not to mention that there would be media directed at minors to vote one way or another, which would definitly put a spin on things.
So no, nobody would be having three votes to your one, insofar as this hasn’t *always* been true. This isn’t the three fifth provision, you know…
God knows what I want is MORE advertising aimed at my child.
But you, as a collective whole, allow the market do so, why not the politics? Probably better for your kid as well, and probably for the rest of us…with that famed low tolerance for hypocrisy, and low verbal ability…that might drive discourse into a completely different direction.
Also understand, this isn’t really about national elections. There is a substantial probability of benefit if this is applied to local elections, since this is where the patriarchy impacts children the most. There is alot of thinking of children as property attitude that impact children at the local level. Making it expensive to continue that attitude is an unalloyed good.
Also…
As a general meta.
People who worry about the value of their own vote in discussions about enfranchising other people are people I think of, at best, seriously misguided.
“People who worry about the value of their own vote in discussions about enfranchising other people are people I think of, at best, seriously misguided.”
…or just Republicans…
The observation that children cannot do worse than the majority of the enfranchised adult population might or might not be true.
That, if it is true, it should lead to a discussion about extending the franchise to children is laughable. The more reasonable response would be to remove it from many of the adults.
I’ve ridden my bike for over 40 years (sigh) and ridden thousands of miles and have never once been flipped off.
You may be doing it wrong.
At what point do you think that kids should be able to vote? When they can be drafted? What does that have to do with anything since we have a volunteer army and most people never join the Armed Forces?
At what point are kids mature enough to make decisions on their own? If they can’t vote at 14, should they be able to get an abortion at 14 without parental notification?
If the age of consent in a state is 14, why shouldn’t those kids be able to vote?
It’s a good suggestion, but why not do both? It’s not like we’re limited to doing one or the other.
We should be working to make it easier for people to vote (there’s been one step forward recently with early voting periods in some states, and two steps back with increasingly rigid voter identification laws). But sixteen year olds, most of whom are as competent to vote as eighteen year olds, have interests they would be able to protect through voting, and thus the moral right to do so. They shouldn’t have to wait to exercise that right until adults get all the other problems fixed.
Because if people aren’t utilizing their rights the way you think they should, then you should take away those rights?
Dumbass.
The Phoenician wrote:
Well, it’s true that our founding fathers thought that the wisest thing was to restrict the franchise to white male property owners, and I see no reason to question their wisdom!
“Voting for class president in junior high is one thing (mostly a popularity contest from what I remember), but voting for a public office or state constitutional amendments is quite different.”
I’m *still* laughing
Thank you. The ways in which children are categorically denied rights and often subject to pretty awful violations by their elders without legal recourse is often a blindspot of progressive civil rights pushes — not intentionally, I expect, but present nonetheless.
I’d love to see the voting age lowered at least to 16 — pretty much every student in my high school (alternative, but inner-city and underfunded) would have been ready to vote at 16, I’d say. Lowering it to this age has a great deal of potential to improve voting patterns in older people, as you build the habit early on — get kids registered and have them vote in their first election during school, and they’re much more likely to continue voting from then on.
Because if people aren’t utilizing their rights the way you think they should, then you should take away those rights?
No, that’s the position of, say, the protesters at Smith who shouted down that asshole, Sorba, who, none the less, had the right to speak.
If I was making a serious comment, it wouldn’t be about limiting the franchise based on people utilizing their rights, it would be about limiting it based on their qualifications to exercise their rights.
For example, a list of ten questions asking potential voters to distinguish between Sunni and Shi’ite, to understand what public debt was, and to have a grasp of the basic income distribution in the country, among others.
Or, you know, you could always draft voters - pick only 100 or 200 people from a district, but *require* them to vote - similar to jury duty. It’d stuff up the big money campaigns.
Qualified rights aren’t rights, they’re privileges.
Qualified rights aren’t rights, they’re privileges.
That’s… a valid point, not completely true, but very far from false.
No right is absolute in a complex society. I’ll have to consider this a bit more.
with that famed low tolerance for hypocrisy, and low verbal ability…that might drive discourse into a completely different direction.
I’d predict that direction to be a trend toward the intolerably treacly, punctuated by heavily-foreshadowed bouts of slapstick violence.
But that’s just from skipping over the marketing aimed at my kid at fast-forward speed.
As to the proposal itself: My kid is a typical 8 year old. She is a strong voice for Obama, because no one with mixed heritage has ever been President before, and she knows from her own experience (’Hey, what are YOU?’ ‘A person, what are you?’) that he has some insights into our society that are not available to the other candidates. But for that differentiation, she would not be interested enough to have an opinion, kind of like a FOX viewer.
That said, allowing children who can’t safely drive or work to vote is a ridiculous suggestion. As someone has explained, children are not capable of complex, abstract reasoning until the prefrontal cortex develops.
Current neuroscience suggests that those of you still under 25 aren’t being unfairly denied a rental car, you’re just being treated as typically developing members of our species.
Hypothetically, let’s say the most important thing for me right now is rent control, and if I don’t get that, I’ll be out on the street.
So I’m a single issue voter, and it’s a hard-hearted person who could say that this single issue shouldn’t dominate my voting patterns. Without it, little else can matter to me.
Now, it may be a concern of others whether I’m likely to inadvertently vote for a warmonger in the process of pursuing my single issue. And they’ve the right to try to tell me that I should expand my sphere of concerns. But I can’t see how they’ve any right to limit my access to rent control based on whether I know who Abu Bakr and Ali were.
Knowledge tests like that would have the effect of the government deciding for the voters which issues are important, which is self-evidently backwards. They may also be an effective tool for hyper-partisans to artificially divide the public into warring camps, a fine situation for authoritarians to exploit.
It’s curious. No one wants to speak of the connection between the ability to vote and the ability to have an abortion without parental notification.
We can be for voting for tweens and teens or against voting for tweens and teens, but none of us dare make the connection between not allowing voting for tweens or teens and yet allowing them to have an abortion without parental notification….
(sorry if this is a double post, weird browser things beep beep beep.)
Charlequin wrote:
Many cities use public schools as polling places, and have the schools closed on election day; bringing in thousands of unsupervised people onto school grounds is a security risk.
A couple of additional problems with having students vote while in school: not every school is a polling place, and students in individual schools may be residents of widely different precincts.
The Phoenician wrote:
And voting is a privilege, treated entirely different from a right. The things we legally consider rights — freedom of speech, trial by jury, due process of law, etc — are constitutionally extended to all “persons” within the jurisdiction, whether citizens or not, regardless of age, whether convicted felons or not, and without a requirement for prior registration.
To vote, you must register to vote, you must be a resident of a particular district, you must either go to a specific location at an appointed time or go to the courthouse to pick up an absentee ballot — again, within a specific timeframe — you must have attained legal majority, and you must not be a convicted felon. (Some states do allow felons to regain the privilege to vote, but they often have several additional requirements to be met.)
We like to refer to it as the right to vote, but legally it is treated as a privilege.
Dana, thanks for expressing the attitude I tried to describe over here…
Dana May 12, 2008 at 8:47 pm
To vote, you must register to vote, you must be a resident of a particular district, you must either go to a specific location at an appointed time or go to the courthouse to pick up an absentee ballot — again, within a specific timeframe — you must have attained legal majority, and you must not be a convicted felon. (Some states do allow felons to regain the privilege to vote, but they often have several additional requirements to be met.)”
actually, the very core idea of “democracy” is that voting is “fundamental right”. It is non negotiable. One person-one vote. No ifs and no buts.
The rest is voters suppression, mass manipulation, vote stealing, etc.
It happens all over the world in tin pot dictator, all sort of petty rules and regulations who can and cannot vote.
Here’s the deal:
It is very hard to find an argument against kids voting that does not also apply to some adults.
Some women vote as they are told to do.
Some elderly people vote as they are told to do by their care givers.
Mentally disabled and brain damaged people still vote.
The only argument that I think holds any water here is cognitive maturity level. While this varies from kid to kid, the ability to make mature, independent decisions is strongly correlated with age of the kid. Even my boys, who are unusually independent and cognitively capable - demonstrably more so than some adults - still lack that long-range capability needed for making certain adult decisions … and they will for years to come.
There is solid cognitive research demonstrating that teenagers really do understand the consequences of their actions: HOWEVER, it is the tendency to vastly overstate the benefits of certain actions or behavior that tends to get them into trouble. Such immature wiring would have consequences were teens to be able to vote, as they would similarly tend to be drawn in by the short-term pandering (gas tax holiday, anybody?) even if they intellectually understood what would likely happen as a result. This would, in turn, change the way that politicians pander - they would more likely overemphasize the short term benefits to bring in the youth vote based on this simple but well documented tendency of youth to buy in.
In that case, the age 18 level may actually be too low an age for truly mature decisionmaking that we would desire in voters … it was dropped because those who were expected to go die were not allowed to vote, not because of any scientific estimates of mature decision making age.
Interesting that getting 18-25 year olds to vote is difficult in most election cycles. Could it possibly be that those who cannot see any tangible or sufficient short term value in it simply remove themselves from the electorate?
Oh, poor troll Ha Ha. Here’s a cookie.
This goes with the post that is still in moderation.
Long story short: there is a scientific argument to be made here that has yet to be made. It has to do with the development of decisionmaking capabilities in adolescent children.
More on youth decisionmaking capacity:
Mentally disabled and brain damaged people still vote.
Aren’t the worries about teenagers’ cognitive maturity and long-term decision making abilities just another variation on this theme?
And I’m not sure those studies are particularly relevant to the issue of voting. Giedd’s work was with fMRI, so by necessity he’s measuring decisions that are made in the short term. When I was voting at eighteen, I was planning weeks in advance, and so were my friends, who were asking each other for their takes on the issues and candidates, and weighing many conflicting data points. This is what voting means for most people, teens and adults alike. I’d suspect this has a balancing effect against the tendencies toward short term gain that drive decisions like “let’s raid the parents’ liquor cabinet tonight.”
I’m sure some people do make all their decisions at the last minute in the voting booth, but when adults do this they’re likely to fuck up too, right? Do teens bring anything new to that situation?
Finally, if younger teens have interests that are simply not being served by the 18+ voting public, there’s a moral problem in not letting them choose their own representatives. Some of them will fuck it up. But if the choice is necessarily between zero representation and half-assed representation, the answer still seems obvious.
Thank you Kate. Om nom nom nom.
But troll? Even your post that goes with the one in moderation says that adolescent brains are works in progress. Or as we used to call it, “not fully myelinated.”
So how is it we can discuss kids not being able to vote properly and not ask ourselves why we think that the same kids can make decisions about abortion without parental advice?
And yeah, I think it’s incredibly telling that no one here will address this. I’m pro-abortion, but I do think that appropriate created parental notification laws are a good thing. It is revealing that people here scared to address it.
Nobody is “scared” to address it. It just isn’t a particularly interesting point, and that’s why everyone’s been ignoring you. Sorry, but you don’t always get to be the center of attention.
Here: we know that abortion is a non-negotiable necessity for many people, including teenagers. We know that some parents will abuse their daughters for having sex and/or seeking an abortion, or force them to give birth against their will. So we allow young women under the age of majority to receive the abortions they need while avoiding abuse and forced birth. We do this simply because young women deserve better than abuse and forced birth. Their competency to vote, or not, has not shit do to with this.
Satisfied now? I hope one of us is, because I’m bored to death.
So how is it we can discuss kids not being able to vote properly and not ask ourselves why we think that the same kids can make decisions about abortion without parental advice?
This is simple for me. Abortion is a teen making a decision about her own body. Voting is her making a decision that affects way more than just her body. I’m all for giving teenagers bodily autonomy. I’m not so much for giving them the vote.
That said, if teenagers can’t vote, they also shouldn’t have to pay taxes.
Here’s the real question, threadjacking asshole:
Why do you anti-choicers only want to give parents the right to veto an abortion? I’ve never understood that. Good parents who actually care about their daughters would far rather have veto power over having a baby. Neither is right or fair to girls’ rights, but if you really love your daughter, odds are that the last thing you want is to have her have a baby at 12 years old. Any decent parent would far rather have a teenage girl sneak off for an abortion than show up and say, “I’m pregnant and we’re keeping it because we’re in love and I didn’t need to go to college anyway neener neener!” A parent who would force a daughter to have a baby shouldn’t have had kids if they couldn’t love the girl children. The urge to frog march a teenage girl into an abortion clinic is far more understandable to me than to force her to have a baby. It’s not right, but it at least comes from a place of wanting the best for her.
Damn! The three of you beat me to it!
My take is that an abortion should be required, as pregnancy and birth are increasingly medically hazardous the earlier that it takes place in the life of a female human. Parents should have to make a case as to why their child should not have this lifesaving medical treatment for their life-threatening condition, just as they would for cancer treatment (again - controlling a runaway growth can kill) or heart surgery or a blood transfusion.
Make them go before the judge and make the case about how their religion demands that their daughter risk her life - or how their daughter has grown out of that risk by being old enough to safely bear a child.
Oh, OT Amanda: could you please find a way to word your thread titles such that it doesn’t attract Official Childfree ™ Trolls interested only in their personal “breeder=cow” and “parent owns child as lifestyle” and “whatever I do is okay because I don’t have sprogs” frames of idiocy?
We already have people on board here who can make the relevant and important points in a far more intelligent manner AND actually read what people are posting in the proper thread context without extreme needy immaturity leaking through.
Thank you.
Where did I say I wouldn’t get my kid an abortion?
I am pro-choice, and definitely don’t want my kids having kids before they are 18.
But that has nothing to do with parental notification.
Parental notification alerts the parent that something is wrong. Perhaps they have a boyfriend you don’t know about. Perhaps there was a rape. Perhaps there is a statutory rapist present.
This isn’t about whether kids should have kids.
This is about whether kids that you don’t think are smert enough to vote are wise enough to handle everything in their environment, like rape, statuory rape, and unsafe sex.
To make it more clear, if my kids tell me they are pregnant, I will drive them to the clinic, if I am the person they want to get them there.
And your arguments regarding abuse from fathers doesn’t wash, since with good laws, young girls can seek an alternative to parental notification by going to a court.
This isn’t threadjacking, this goes directly to the question of your debate: are kids qualified to vote? If not, how can we consider them qualified to make choices without their parents present.
Ms. Kate, yesterday in Utah, a child was taken from his father (mother died a few years ago) and was forcibly given chemo. This was treatment the child had been through before successfully, though a year later his cancer came back. But the child, when told what his chances were decided he didn’t want the treatment because of its side effects. This had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with quality of life issues.
If you think judges do everything right, you’re wrong. If you think they do everything wrong, you’re wrong.
There are fucked up parents and fucked up judges. But together most parents are good, and most judges try to do the right thing.
By trying to protect against the bad parent AND bad judge you are going after a problem that is much more rare than just worrying about bad parents alone.
I was in high school in 2000, and there was a LOT of political awareness and activism. And it wasn’t all coming from the parents, who were largely conservative-leaning (Catholic high school)–most of the student body was much more liberal than their parents. Even the Republican students were, I think, generally more involved in the political process, as much as they could be underage, than their parents. I would be all for lowering the voting age to 15 or 16–there’s a lot to be said for the enthusiasm of youth, and for encouraging young people to be engaged in the process rather than apathetic, while they’re still idealistic enough to believe they can make a difference.
I actually talked my mom into voting differently on something (or would have, if she hadn’t already cast her ballot)–not because we disagreed on the basic issue, but because I was concerned about the specific language of the measure. And I really wasn’t that unusual at my high school (although my school might have been unusual.
Any decent parent would far rather have a teenage girl sneak off for an abortion than show up and say, “I’m pregnant and we’re keeping it because we’re in love and I didn’t need to go to college anyway neener neener!”
Which is interesting, considering that this is the exact subject of that venerable classic, “Papa Don’t Preach”. It’s not a song about telling your dad you need an abortion, or your dad finding out that you had an abortion. It’s a song about telling your dad that, not only are you pregnant, but you want to have a baby and get married insanely young to some tool who under normal circumstances you would have forgotten about in less than 6 months.
I’m with the person who tried to point out that the article in question isn’t about lowering the voting age; it’s about abolishing it! Therefore, all of this concerned whining about your 10th grade political views is pretty much moot. I think it’s obvious that most of us agree that the voting age should be lowered to some extent. Talking about parental notification/abortion, child-free-ness and our own precocious Li’l Liberals is just distracting us from the point Amanda was originally making re: parents using their young children for extra votes.
I’m not talking about twelve-year-olds or sixteen-year-olds, I’m talking about three-year-olds. I agree that all of the suggested ages are arbitrary, but at a certain point you’re really not enfranchising anyone, you’re just allowing them to be used. A twelve-year-old has generally been exposed to the world long enough to realize that she can think independently and make choices for herself. She’ll be able to understand the concept of a representative democracy and figure out which issues matter to her. It really doesn’t matter if she makes the “wrong” choice or votes just like her parents, because she was (ideally!) given the chance to explore her options, learn about the political process and make her own mistakes. But a three-year-old? A three-year-old has a mind of her own, but she most likely hasn’t been exposed to any ideas besides her parents’. I assure you that very few people, liberal or conservative, will take the time to objectively explain the process/issues to her, or tell her that she doesn’t have to vote for mommy and daddy’s favorite candidate, much less vote at all. Furthermore, these ideas may be temporarily beyond her comprehension — and definitely beyond the comprehension of a two-year-old or one-year-old — which effectively reduces her to little more than mommy/daddy’s second vote. I — and possibly you — would be pretty pissed off to find out that my parents used me as a tool to further their political agenda, whether I later agreed with the vote or not.
Basically, giving very young children the vote — which this guy is proposing — would only oppress them further. Young children in general are unaware of their rights, and are easy to exploit. Hell, even if we lived in a perfect world in which parents patiently and nonsubjectively explained reproductive rights or economic policy to their children, we’d still need restrictions to keep people from using their children. The thing about fetus voting rights sounded ridiculous, but you know there’d be a couple of assholes going for it. I’m sure that as feminists, we all agree that taking advantage of someone not in a position to defend oneself is wrong.
The voting age should be lowered to 16, so long as we let children that age drive.
Interesting idea. I do hope however if it happens that children are liable for tax. After all if there’s no taxation without representation then the opposite should also hold true. No representation without taxation. Especially as children are the demographic get the most public funded support already. Adult rights should only come with adult responsibilities.
Interesting idea. I do hope however if it happens that children are liable for tax. After all if there’s no taxation without representation then the opposite should also hold true. No representation without taxation. Especially as children are the demographic get the most public funded support already. Adult rights should only come with adult responsibilities.
HC wrote:
Well, I certainly like the idea of saying that people on welfare couldn’t vote!