Is eighteen too young to vote?

Yes

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by Michael Burgwin

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The question of appropriate voting age begs a difficult distinction: can anyone identify the point in a person's life when they cross the border between "too young to vote" and "old enough?" The vast array of determinant variables make the voting age target too mobile, so we make the decision based on: "If they are old enough to go to war, they are old enough to
vote."

The pool of voting age citizens was expanded to include 18 year-olds precisely because their older political leaders could no longer let slip the the common perception that they were using America's young like cattle being herded off to the killing fields. If an American citizen is old enough to be asked to die for his or her county, then they must also be allowed to participate in the processes that lead to or away from war.

Ironically, this voting-age challenge is not necessarily age specific. The criteria is more dependent on informed awareness, a state of mind that, unfortunately, evades too many of us. Think of it: despite overwhelming evidence, much of it provided by the man himself, that the President of the US is an incompetent leader who does not believe in either democracy or democratic process, about one third of the voting age public still believe that our president GW Bush is the best thing since Jesus and compare the massive, worldwide public outcry toward his incompetence to the persecution the carpenter from Nazareth endured 2000 years ago. Shouldn't those people be disqualified from voting because they are not paying attention; because they are not staying informed?

If eighteen year olds are denied their voting rights, then they should not be allowed to vote for the same reasons that many 21, 30, 40, 50 and 60 year olds (and all dead people) should be prevented from voting: with all too few exceptions, many of our older adults don't give a damn about democracy enough to stay informed. They have no fear of the consequences of uninformed and misinformed voting and they do not recognize the difference between freedom and tyranny. Give them a thousand channels and a set of head phones and the world looks rosy. In short, the reasoning (sic) goes, when they stop acting like children, allow the young adults to vote.

Until the US public school system is resuscitated by an earnest effort on the part of our elected leaders, so that it fully prepares our students to openmindedly wield the weight of their governed lives, eighteen will continue to be too young to vote. However, rather than a reason for denying them voting rights, the need for an informed electorate demands that we improve our public education system. A quality, open-minded education in the place of life experience that can only come with additional time on this planet will bring the political IQ of our young people up to the level required for informed voting.

In the meantime, we need to get our young folks out of the house long enough for them to at least begin to recognize the limits of their relatively brief durations in this world; to discover the limits of their perceptions and their mortality. When a person has lived long enough to recognize the ways in which our government channels the behaviors of the less fortunate to the benefit of the already very fortunate; becomes sensitive to the ways that power can be manipulative; and understands the necessity of transparency in the governments of democracies, then, and only then, will they become empowered to fully participate in the self-governing democratic process.

Of course, we can choose to march down the course that re-limits the 18 year-olds when it comes to voting. It will then also be necessary that their rights as non-certifiable members of this democracy be infringed in at least one other way: if we decide that an 18 year-old does not understand the ramifications of an uninformed vote and is, therefore, not allowed to vote, then he or should also not be allowed to go to war.

The best and favored course is to continue to empower our young adults who are 18 years or older with voting rights and to provide them the education and experience that will sensitize them to the huge responsibility that comes with exercising those rights. We must teach all of our citizens, regardless of age, to care about what goes on in the capitals, city halls and courthouses, to pay close attention to the behaviors of our representatives, and to take right action. Without that, among other less desirable things, we will continue to march ourselves off to misguided wars for our own extermination.

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