Do you honestly think it would be a good thing for kids (ages 5 - 15) to vote?
Do you think, then, it's a no-brainer that kids 16-17 should be allowed to vote? Because right now, though many of them (depending on state of residence) are legal to marry, they may not vote.
Cause if you grant 16 year olds are mature enough to vote... er, well which 16 year olds? It's a well documented phenomenon that girls develop cognitively earlier than boys do, through youth/adolescence. Doesn't it make more sense to allow people of a certain developmental attainment vote? In which case, if we're talking about 16 year old boys, that means, IIRC, 14 year old girls, and if we're talking 16 year old girls, that means 18 year old boys.
For that matter, the diversity of development is pretty extreme. If through rigorous confirmed social science research we learn 40% of 15 year old girls are developmentally prepared (however we might define that) to take on the responsibility of stewarding our democracy, does that mean that it's OK for that 40% to be disenfranchised because the other 60% isn't developmentally ready? That's (using the numbers from the 2000 census) just under 800,000 people we're saying don't get to vote, for no other reason than they have the misfortune of being in an involuntary abstract classification.
Is there some other 800,000 people we're willing to say to, "Well, sucks to be you, you don't get to vote because you belong to the wrong demographic, even though, really, we know there's no reason not to"?
But this is all hypothetical. Quite reasonably, you might be saying, "We don't know it's 40% of 15 year old girls. Maybe it's only... oh, I dunno... 5% of 15 year old girls." That's quite right. Maybe it's only 5%. That's just under 100k people -- out of 800k -- we'd be saying to "Nope, you don't get to vote solely because of how we've classified you."
How many people is it OK to, er, "collaterally" disenfranchise? Is it OK if we accidentally purge a bunch of people from voter roles in our effort to prevent felons from voting?
I think one is too many. I may give up on democracy some day, but not today. Today, I'm holding on to basic principles: If you pay taxes, you vote. If you're a citizen, you vote. That voting is both a right and a duty, and that it is a crime to unvoice any citizen in this society who is capable of raising one. That too much grief has come to use by trying to pick and chose which people are people enough to vote.
If there is a single person at the age of 15 -- or the age of 12 -- or the age of 5 -- who understands what a vote is enough to request one, then, bless their hearts and give them a ballot.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-17 03:48 am (UTC)Do you think, then, it's a no-brainer that kids 16-17 should be allowed to vote? Because right now, though many of them (depending on state of residence) are legal to marry, they may not vote.
Cause if you grant 16 year olds are mature enough to vote... er, well which 16 year olds? It's a well documented phenomenon that girls develop cognitively earlier than boys do, through youth/adolescence. Doesn't it make more sense to allow people of a certain developmental attainment vote? In which case, if we're talking about 16 year old boys, that means, IIRC, 14 year old girls, and if we're talking 16 year old girls, that means 18 year old boys.
For that matter, the diversity of development is pretty extreme. If through rigorous confirmed social science research we learn 40% of 15 year old girls are developmentally prepared (however we might define that) to take on the responsibility of stewarding our democracy, does that mean that it's OK for that 40% to be disenfranchised because the other 60% isn't developmentally ready? That's (using the numbers from the 2000 census) just under 800,000 people we're saying don't get to vote, for no other reason than they have the misfortune of being in an involuntary abstract classification.
Is there some other 800,000 people we're willing to say to, "Well, sucks to be you, you don't get to vote because you belong to the wrong demographic, even though, really, we know there's no reason not to"?
But this is all hypothetical. Quite reasonably, you might be saying, "We don't know it's 40% of 15 year old girls. Maybe it's only... oh, I dunno... 5% of 15 year old girls." That's quite right. Maybe it's only 5%. That's just under 100k people -- out of 800k -- we'd be saying to "Nope, you don't get to vote solely because of how we've classified you."
How many people is it OK to, er, "collaterally" disenfranchise? Is it OK if we accidentally purge a bunch of people from voter roles in our effort to prevent felons from voting?
I think one is too many. I may give up on democracy some day, but not today. Today, I'm holding on to basic principles: If you pay taxes, you vote. If you're a citizen, you vote. That voting is both a right and a duty, and that it is a crime to unvoice any citizen in this society who is capable of raising one. That too much grief has come to use by trying to pick and chose which people are people enough to vote.
If there is a single person at the age of 15 -- or the age of 12 -- or the age of 5 -- who understands what a vote is enough to request one, then, bless their hearts and give them a ballot.
[continued]