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Missouri teens want to lower the voting age to 16 in local and school elections
(news.stlpublicradio.org)
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Politics
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yeah not a big fan of that idea. I remember my political ideas when I was 16. I used to believe that social darwinism would be the best policy, to just rod the world of the weak, and the strong would prevail making the world better. I was convinced of this by my other 16 and 17 year old friends, who likely heard about it in one of their classes in highschool. in fact a lot of us believed this, as 16 year olds are really easily convinced of ideas that sounds good when spoken. It didn't take me long once I got out of highschool and started getting my first adult experience to realize how stupid that idea is.
The problem is high schoolers mainly experience the struggle of navigating social groups and are just trying to figuring out how to fit in with those around them. They are surrounded by peer pressure by those who also don't fully understand the complexity of social relationships. They are bound to have strong opinions based on little real world experience.
Not only that, it is easy to manipulate large groups of young highschoolers to believe what you want them to. Does anyone remember "The Wave" experiment where a highschool teacher was able to convert almost the entire student body into fascist beliefs before dropping it on them what he had done? I worry that if highschoolers are able to vote, that our already corrupt politicians will absolutely abuse that susceptibility to their own agendas.
Is there any part of this argument that does not also apply to college students? This is a genuine question, not intended as a gotcha. We allow 18 year olds to vote although they are subjected to many of the same pressures and inexperiences.
Yes, but also no. But as in, not as much. 18-19 year olds in college have a lot of the same inexperience, but at least they are starting to get their first real taste of freedom. Where they are making decisions that actively shape their life, instead of it being decided for them. And a lot of 18-19 year olds go right to work after highschool, and are starting to see what it's like to try and make a life for themselves. Dealing with jobs, banks, application processes, bills, and otherwise dealing with the systems that are affected by those they would be voting for.
If I think back to my first time voting after highschool, there was a lot I was kinda just going with the few things I knew, which wasn't much. I didn't like this guy because what he said, I like this guy because my family seems to like him. (I voted for Bush, because he seemed to do good on his first term and that John Kerry guy seemed shifty. That was literally it.) but I had at least started working and paying bills, and had at least the understanding that the ideas I held in highschool were a bit short sighted.
I think the main issue is that if you reduce the voting age to 16 you get a much larger pool of voters that can be easily convinced to vote based on targeted campaigning. And because the easily swayed, emotionally charged collection of 16-20 year olds is way more votes than the easily swayed emotionally charged 18-20 group is, a politician running a campaign targeted towards that group using extremist ideals, could really gain more traction and sway elections.
So I would be worried about seeing our very limited 2 party system start leaning even more towards the extreme sides than it already is.
I think these are fair points and definite possibilities! I don't, however, know that I'd agree that these hypotheticals are enough to deny voting rights for local and school elections (remember, the 16 year olds won't be voting for Bush in this scenario). So I don't know if money and propaganda is quite so influential at that small scale--I haven't found it to be in the past. Most people don't even know their local elections are happening, much less know who the party line says to vote for.