Perhaps A Good Notion
I recently noticed a website advocating for the lowering of the voting age to 15 advertised on Google Ads. The website is called Teen Vote and they seem to be taking the issue seriously. Its an interesting idea, but I there could be a couple of problems with it.
First, just how many informed voters are there in the 15 - 17 age group? As Marty of Vigilance Matters pointed out in the comments to this post, the one thing we don't need is more uninformed people making random votes and skewing election results. Yet the Teen Vote website seems to think that uninformed voters won't be a problem because those who don't care enough to become informed probably won't be voting anyway:
My other concern would be that politically active parents could influence their children into adding a couple of extra points to whatever cause or candidate the parents are supporting. This issue is less of a problem with eighteen-year-olds who are, for the most part, out of the house by that age. But as the Teen Vote website points out again, one's political perspective is so often influenced by parents anyway so this issue may not be as important as it seems.
Teen Vote's ideas are interesting, but before I could support a cause like it I'd have to know that there was a large block of informed 15 - 17 year-old voters who actually want to vote. While I would have voted at that age, I also know that a lot of my motivations for wanting to vote a certain way were naive and immature. Judging from the 15 - 17 year-olds I've met in my life, I'm not sure that many of them would be able to vote intelligently or would even have an interest in voting. Because of this, I have a feeling that Teen Vote isn't going to be very successful.
First, just how many informed voters are there in the 15 - 17 age group? As Marty of Vigilance Matters pointed out in the comments to this post, the one thing we don't need is more uninformed people making random votes and skewing election results. Yet the Teen Vote website seems to think that uninformed voters won't be a problem because those who don't care enough to become informed probably won't be voting anyway:
If a youth doesn't want to take the time to learn about the candidates and decide on one, he or she doesn't have to vote. Most of the "uninformed" teenagers are uninformed because they don't really care who's running the country. And if they don't care about who's running the country, they probably wouldn't vote. The ones who do care -- and our numbers are rapidly increasing -- are the ones who do take the time to learn about the process and the candidates, and they're the ones who would exercise their newly-granted right to vote.
My other concern would be that politically active parents could influence their children into adding a couple of extra points to whatever cause or candidate the parents are supporting. This issue is less of a problem with eighteen-year-olds who are, for the most part, out of the house by that age. But as the Teen Vote website points out again, one's political perspective is so often influenced by parents anyway so this issue may not be as important as it seems.
Teen Vote's ideas are interesting, but before I could support a cause like it I'd have to know that there was a large block of informed 15 - 17 year-old voters who actually want to vote. While I would have voted at that age, I also know that a lot of my motivations for wanting to vote a certain way were naive and immature. Judging from the 15 - 17 year-olds I've met in my life, I'm not sure that many of them would be able to vote intelligently or would even have an interest in voting. Because of this, I have a feeling that Teen Vote isn't going to be very successful.
pparets
laydownSally
Puzzlefeet
The Whistler
Brian
