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Last time the voting age
was lowered, in 1971 with the passing of the 26th Amendment, it
was the fastest ratified Amendment in US history. The age was lowered
from twenty-one to eighteen because eighteen and nineteen year olds were
dying for this country in the Vietnam War, but weren’t allowed to cast a
ballot. Now sixteen-year-olds want to vote, too.
At sixteen, a teenager can
drive a car, can have a job, pays taxes, can be charged as an adult for a
crime, and in some states even get married with parent’s consent. So why
can’t a sixteen-year-old vote? Teenagers have to follow the laws imposed
by the government, but in no way can influence them. Politicians don’t
try to attract the youth vote; they don’t need to, therefore we have no
political representation. Yet the laws the government passes, we must
abide by. Even though we can’t vote like adults can, we can still be
charged as an adult for adult crimes. Teenagers can hold adult jobs and
pay taxes. Teens pay an estimated 9.7 billion dollars in sales taxes
alone.
In the year 2000, only
forty-two percent of young adults voted. This isn’t a reason to not let
sixteen-year-olds vote. This generation should be given a chance as did
the generation of eighteen-year-olds in 1971. The habit of voting needs
to be enforced at a young age. If teenagers are exposed to politics,
let’s suggest in school, for example, they will become more likely to
become active in elections as adults. The same thing would happen if they
were given the opportunity to vote at sixteen; then they’d more likely to
stick with it throughout life.
The stereotypical teenager
who doesn’t care about politics wouldn’t vote. That applies to adults who
don’t care, as well. If teenagers can’t vote because supposedly our
maturity, intelligence or life-experience isn’t substantial enough to
matter, then everyone should be required to be tested to see if their
maturity, intelligence or life-experience is substantial enough to
matter.
In the 2008 election, I
will be seventeen. I’ll have to wait to vote for the first time until
2012. By then, I’ll be in college, preferably out of state, and voting
will become a hassle. I’ll be preoccupied with school, living on my own,
and so forth. I’ll probably never get in the habit of voting because I’ll
miss out on my window of opportunity, like the other fifty-eight percent
of young adults who didn’t vote in 2000. There are plenty of teenagers
who will have a problem similar to this. Politicians always criticize the
citizens of this country for not getting involved, though it lies within
their hands to give teenagers, like me, that window of opportunity to be
involved in something as important and influential as politics are in this
country.
Sources: YouthRights.org,
the Enquirer, MSNBC |
