Democratic legislators here in Oregon have proposed lowering the voting age to 16, via a bill that would amend the Oregon Constitution accordingly. Backers are pointing to issues like gun violence and the environment as those over which younger voters should have some say. Both of these particular issues in fact provide ample evidence that 16- and 17-year-olds are ready for the vote in order to engage on these and other matters. Does anyone really doubt that the direction of the gun debate was not changed by the teenage organizing of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors, who applied idealism and belief in change to their horrifying experience in a way that shamed the nation and opened all our eyes to what is politically possible? That these organizers were able to make change without necessarily having the vote shouldn’t be a mark against lowering the voting age, but taken as evidence that this age cohort has the intellectual capacity and moral compass to participate fully.
We should also see the looming disaster of climate chaos as a game changer on questions of the proper age to vote, as it is rapidly shifting so many other of our assumptions about how we live our lives. Those whose adulthood will be seriously impinged if global warming is not addressed in the immediate future deserve an equal voice in our politics.
I also strongly suspect that younger voters who do not feel ready to vote. . . will simply not vote. On the flip side, encouraging youth to be civically engaged and not waste their vote should provide vital early education on the importance of being involved in politics, and yield higher voting going forward.
It is no surprise, but still sad, to see Republican opposition to this proposed change. Oregon Senate Republican leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. has issued a statement asserting that adulthood in the U.S. begins at 18. As evidence, he points to a variety of activities in which 16-year olds cannot participate, including joining the military (actually, 17-year-olds can do so) or getting married. He leaves out, though, other contradicting facts, such as 16-year-olds being able to drive and being required to pay taxes on their jobs (which they are obviously allowed to perform). But Baertschiger’s comment that “This is nothing more than an attempt to expand the voter rolls to sway elections” provides an odd reassurance that in Oregon, as in much of the U.S., Republicans are singing from the same anti-democratic hymn book. The assumption that making it easier to vote is inherently bad, and is part of a nefarious plot to “sway elections,” also reveals the basic GOP assumption that more people voting means more people, in aggregate, voting against Republicans. It is also of note that he concedes that Republicans would not be competitive with this age group, which is tacitly blamed on the judgment of 16- and 17-year-olds, rather than on GOP policies out of step with the American majority, and, on issues such as climate change, out of step with basic reality.