representation for young people

[Jan Kok]

(Do you know some young people? Pass this along to them. I'd be
interested to hear their opinions.)

I was just thinking about the reasons in favor of proportional
representation and the types of "minorities" that are
under-represented in legislatures. Actually, women are a slight
majority in the US (http://mchb.hrsa.gov/whusa04/pages/ch1.htm) but
are under-represented in the US House and Senate, for example.

Another severely under-represented group is young people. The US
Constitution requires US representatives to be at least 25 and US
senators to be at least 30 years old. The 26th Amendment requires
states to allow anyone 18 years or older to vote. Apparently states
could allow even younger people to vote if the states wished, but I
don't think any states do so.

So my questions are:

- Should age requirements for legislators (which could include state
legislators, city council members, etc.) be lowered, and to what age?
Note that with proportional representation, some legislators could get
elected who were as young as the youngest voters.

- What should the minimum voting age be?

- How would politics be affected by more representation of young
people? What sorts of issues do young people care about more than the
rest of the voters?

My opinions:

- Age limits for legislators seem unnecessary. Let the voters decide
who are competent to hold office.

- I would suggest 14 as the minimum voting age. Usually it is the
president who gets us into wars. 18 year old kids get sent to fight
those wars. So, 14 year olds should have the opportunity to vote for
the president who might send them to war.

Speaking for myself, 14 year old kids don't know much about politics
in general. But they do know something about the issues that affect
them personally (see below). For other issues and offices, I would
expect kids to either consult their parents or other trusted advisors,
or not vote on referenda and offices they know nothing about, or just
not vote at all.

One danger I see, from my libertarian standpoint, of giving 14 year
olds the vote, is that the government schools would pump the kids full
of pro-government propaganda (well, they do that anyway - for example,
it's unlikely that civics teachers in public schools are going to
advocate cutting budgets for public schools!), and then they might bus
them to the polls during the school day.

- My guess is that political issues that young people would be
particularly interested in are US involvement in wars and military
actions, drug/alcohol/tobacco laws, laws related to driving, child
labor laws, taxes, and education. My hope is that kids would tend
toward a libertarian viewpoint on those issues, but who knows...

Cheers,
- Jan

[Tammy Kilgore]

Jan--

I don't have a strong objection to allowing younger people to vote, and I agree that it would be best if those who are asked to carry guns are also allowed to vote. However, the process doesn't start with voting. In general, it takes a while before the average young voter starts to exercise his or her right to vote. This is the basis for the large number of "young voter" (ages 18-24) campaigns that were launched for the 2004 general election. Before we lower the voting age, I think our efforts might be better spent preparing adults to vote as soon as they become eligible.

One other thought: Are you familiar with the book The Wisdom of Crowds? A key point made in that book is that in order for a "crowd" to make a good decision, the members of the crowd must act (and think) independently. Is this (currently) possible for a 14-year-old who is both financially and emotionally dependent on his or her parents.? At age 14, many people are acting in opposition to their parents and elders, others are acting in accordance, but relatively few of them (I'd guess) are acting independently. On the other hand, you could argue that the rest of the population does not act particularly independently either.

--tk

[Terrill Bouricius]

I tend to favor broadening the franchise, and I can't help noting (with a smile) the remarkable similarity between the concern for independence of 14 year-olds and the nearly identical concern expressed 100 years ago about the independence of women (won't they just duplicate their husbands' vote).

 

Terry