The Voting Age Must be Lowered for Democracy to Exist in America
Imagine for a moment that senior citizens were denied the right to vote. Imagine senior citizens being thought of as too incompetent to vote because some senior citizens are senile. Can you imagine such a large percentage of the American public being denied the right to vote – simply on account of their age? It cannot happen in America, right? Not in a free country, a country where the people control the government, not the other way around? It can happen. It does happen. Only, it does not happen to senior citizens – once they get the right to vote they keep it for life. It happens to young people – people below eighteen years of age. Youth are denied the right to vote
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Voting is also a universal human right, according to the United Nations. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21) states that: "Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives" and that "the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage."
Young people pay taxes. Most pre-teens and teenagers have some method of earning their own income and any young person that purchases items pay sales tax. Tax-paying American citizens are denied the right to vote on account of their age. That is taxation without representation, a basic violation of the principles that this nation was founded upon. American independence was gained as protest against taxation without representation.
Allowing youth to vote is a controversial issue and one that will be met with skepticism. Some people believe that young people are not capable of voting, and will merely cast their votes frivolously. While it may be true that some young people, if given the right to vote, would make uniformed choices, it has already been proven that many voting adults make rash and uninformed choices when they go to the polls. In a Washington Post poll of 1514 adults, only forty-percent of those surveyed could name the Vice President, and
In fact young Americans pay taxes, they pay a lot of them. Teens pay estimated 9.7 billions of dollars in taxes on income, according to the IRS. You can be a teen you may not even have a permeant job, but you have to pay taxes on the same money you earn. Teens have done work 80%as a high school student at some point before graduation.
Since 1972, youth voter turnout has been on the decline. According to the Child Trends Databank, 50 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 participated in the 1972 presidential election (2015). Nearly three decades later, the percentage of young adults aged 18 to 24 who voted in the 2000 presidential election had dropped eighteen
Although, being a teenager myself I do have a clear understanding about the momentous moment certian teeangers in the Montgomery County are being offered, but was it worth the controversy within the government to finally make it happen. A Fred Schultz, elaborated on the issue that the outcome would not be as rewarding for the amount of time that was spent to grant this right to the counties teenagers in order to raise the amount of political participation(Shin). Once the results came trickling in, there seemed to still be an exceedingly low rate for voter turnouts. Montgomery teenagers were simply granted the right, and proved to the county there was no point in doing so since there was little participation from their age group. Not to mention that majority of the sampled teenagers would not take the initiative to register to vote, and even though the county had registration at the Motor Vehicle Registration there is a point that not every teeanger is able to drive legally. Thus, that extra step to increase voter registration amongst teenagers was not beneficial. Giving us the right to vote comes at a cost, and it seems
Voting has not always been as easy as it is today. It is interesting to examine how far America has progressed in its process of allowing different types of people to be able to vote. Voting was once aimed at a particular group of people, which were white males that owned their own property. Today, most people over the age of eighteen can vote, except for the mentally incompetent or people who have been convicted of major felonies in some states. The decline of voter participation has always been a debate in the public arena. According to McDonald and Popkin, it is “the most important, most familiar, most analyzed, and most conjectured trend in recent American political history (2001, 963)” The question is, how important is voter
When a citizen turns 18, the law regards him or her as an independent entity, capable of voting, paying taxes, and serving in the military. To deny this citizen the opportunity to hold federal elected office is inconsistent and discriminatory. Voters should be the judge of a candidate's abilities and qualifications without the government setting restrictions based on certain personal characteristics.
The legal voting age should be reduced to 16 instead of 18. We can work, we can join the army, we can even get married at the age of 16, but we can't vote at 16? We can leave school, we can move out of the family house and live on our own independently if we wanted to at the age of 16, but yet we are considered immature and not responsible enough to vote at 16, why?
In the article “Takoma Park 16-year-old Savors his History-Making Moment at the Polls,” written by Annys Shin, the author focuses on whether or not lowering the voting age from 18 is a good idea towards politics, by looking at the benefits and the disadvantages of both sides. In 2013, the city of Takoma Park was the first to lower the voting age to 16 and change the 26th Amendment in their municipal. Ben Miller and other 16- and 17-year-olds were capable of stepping into a booth and casting their vote at the Takoma Park Community Center. Allowing this age group to cast a vote will lead more teenagers to vote than their older peers, it will get them into the habit of voting for the rest of their lives, and it will also increase their personal
America has been built on the idea that as citizens, we have the choice to decide what is the best for our country. Millions of Americans cast their vote every election day to make sure their voices are heard on who is going to run their country and what new policies they will bring with them. As stated in Anny Shin’s article, “Takoma Park 16-year-old savors his history-making moment at the polls,” voting is a, “valuable privilege,” in which many don’t realize. In the United States, not every is allowed to vote, only 18-year old citizens are allowed to vote. However the number of 18-year olds voting is very low and this has been an issue in the political for quite a while. The concerns and desires of most millennials are not being expressed as many are not voting. Many, like the city of Takoma have proposed to allow 16 and 17-year olds to vote as they believe that voting among millennials will increase.
Allowing teens that are sixteen and seventeen vote is a good idea because many kids have a dream of their own. Ben miller, who is one of the first sixteen years olds to vote stated “it's a valuable privilege”, Which in all ways he's correct not many countries allow their younger generations to vote. After the “26 amendment gave 18-year-olds the right to vote” (shin) the rate of voter registration want up. The younger teenagers are considered more likely to vote than the elders. This showed a small difference in the outturn making it a better chance for whatever candidate to be chosen. Although, Miller did not have a driver's license yet he was still able to vote because of his “pre-register” which allowed him to vote “through the Motor vehicle administration”(shin). Even though his mother was a”writer and whose father does international relief and development work”(shin), he was
In the article, “Takoma Park 16-year-old savors his history-making moment at the polls,” by Annys Shin, many teens who are 16-17 years old can now vote during the election. The decision was made by the Takoma City Council that in Montgomery County Community, they are the first ones in the nation to lower their voting age from 18-16 years old. A group of 350 students from Montgomery Blair High School were granted the right to vote in elections and one of the student who got the right to vote, Ben Miller had said, “ It’s a valuable Privilege,” and he means that it is a great advantage that many 16-17 years old can now vote. Many young adults who are the age of 18 are most likely not a good age to vote because many of them are planning to leave their childhood homes. And they can lack of discipline and causes them not to vote.
Five reasons against 18-year-olds having the right to vote are, Numerous individuals contend that 18-year-olds are not keen and deceived. This stems from the secondary school dropout rate in specific locales and the measure of graduates who don 't wind up going to an organization of advanced education. In a great deal of locales of just Ohio, the dropout rate is fundamentally higher than different spots. For
The main point according Martin P. Wattenberg in Is Voting For Young People is that young people today do not vote during elections as much compared to other voting groups. Young people today are politically unengaged. “These state patterns of voting participation can be confirmed on the national level by the Census Bureau’s 2010 survey data. Among U.S. citizens under the age of 30 in 2010, only 24 percent reported that they voted.” (Page-188, IVYP) The low attendance of young people voting in Presidential elections indicates that young people do not care enough about politics to participate.
Right now, groups are lobbing for Congressmen to pass a bill extending voting privileges to sixteen year olds. By allowing youth to vote the polls would change forever. For example, candidates running for office target their platforms to voters; who cares about people who don’t vote right? But this leaves out over twenty five percent of the population of the United States. By extending the vote to sixteen year olds the amount of unrepresented persons drops to twenty percent. Additionally by having people vote younger they are exposed to
It seems as though the younger population of voters have all grown up in a world where they have been influenced to believe that their one vote will not make a difference, and therefore they do not bother to take the time out of their busy schedules to cast their meaningless vote. In the last presidential election, only one out of four citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four casted their vote (“Is the System broken?”). The opinion that one vote will not make a difference appears to be directly respondent to the younger generation of voters. This generation needs to be educated on the difference that one vote can make.
Universal Suffrage repose in the result of all adult citizens are allowed to vote. Still, to have the right to participate at the suffrage in United of States of America, one’s need to be a citizen and be at least 18 years old. As the definition states suffrage is universal, however, it was not always a privilege that all citizens had. Throughout history the right to vote has been limited, not everyone is allowed to vote. The colored people, women and the poor are considered as inferior and deprived on this right. Even in present-day there are certain limitation and restrictions on who can vote, certain states convicted felon are disfranchised. In the lecture “The History of the right to Vote” it is said that adult college students who go