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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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Power to them. Kids and teens are part of our communities, they’re affected by decisions, so they should have a role in making them when practical. I absolutely trust a 16 year old to vote, and make decent community-minded decisions - most already do so and contribute a lot, just without the same rights as slightly older people. I think this is a step in the right direction.
Especially since kids who are working are paying taxes. Not that that should be the singular standard that determines voting rights or anything. But it is common for kids to start working at 16. Sometimes even earlier; I think in my state you can start working as early as 14, even in non-farm jobs, but it's super restricted. So not a lot of employers hire under-16yo.
Like in the other way, we let 18yos vote and we know they're basically still kids. What is it now; our brains our still developing into our mid-20s, possibly even further?
I will say, I don't trust 16yos (or 18yos) with much. But I would feel comfortable with them voting on local and school board issues. Because it directly effects them and they should have a say. We trust them driving independently, for better or worse. We trust them to work, often with money and other goods. Why shouldn't we trust them to vote on these issues?
Because working with direct supervision is a far cry from making decisions that affect everyone.
I have a 16yo, bless her heart. No way is she ready to vote. I'd far rather not tax children than give them access to running anything connected to law.
Part of the reason 18yos are "ready" to vote is they ostensibly have a couple years of working under their belt. 16yo have no idea how disconnected from reality they really are. Give them a couple more years to operate under responsibilities, first.
I know part of parenting is that constant trade off of allowing a child to express themselves and enforcing boundaries they may not yet understand, and so preventing problems for the future by way of boundary enforcement, but voting in local elections and school boards and things that impact them seems like relatively low consequence.
The worst case scenario is that teenagers become the most active voters that need to be courted by potential school board candidates, who then propose policies that are actually harmful to teens but seem attractive to them, e.g., canceling school more or similar. And that seems fairly low risk considering that they're outnumbered by adults, so they would need a substantial block of adult voters that agree as well. I think it's a decent introduction to voting, with consequences for actions, but with a limited scale and scope that would do well for them.
Thinking about the issues on my local ballot in recent years, it's things like library funding, police funding, school board and town council reps, judges, and otherwise appointing adults or approving bonds that have been requested by adults. I think teenagers could have valuable input on those.
I'm with some of the others in the thread. If they're trusted to drive, to work, to be tried as an adult for crimes, they should get a say in management. Otherwise raise driving age and working age to 18 and be done with it.