| > You're coming across as quite the bigot. Why is it that preventing the old from voting is "bigotry", whilst preventing the young from voting is merely an act prudence? You must remember that democracy is governance "by the people, for the people", not governance by some arbitrarily selected subset of the people. There is an age below which the majority of people are unable to make informed decisions about political representation (either due to lack of understanding or pressure from third parties like family), but I'm not convinced that 18 is that age. Mind you, age cutoffs aren't the only way of tackling this problem. > I don't know about you, but I learn more every year, so I imagine by the time I'm 75, I'll know at least three times as much as I know now. Unlikely. Net knowledge growth rate usually decreases significantly with age. You'll likely accumulate more knowledge between now and when you're 75, but certainly not three times more[0]. Ask a 75 year-old ;-) > Nor do I think being in school adequately prepares or informs anyone to be a citizen. I couldn't agree more. In fact, that was the point of my proposal. I don't think that today's youth take an active enough interest in politics, and I believe that allowing them to participate in the democratic system could increase their motivation to become more informed citizens. [0]: At least, not by any measurable metric. "Common sense" is completely different. |
There are lots of laws that restrict certain rights and privileges to adults only, and for fairly sensible reasons. No one wants to be governed by children. Maybe you want to lower the age of adulthood, and maybe that's possible, but it's something we'd need to do across the board.
There's also the troubling idea that you'd be taking the franchise away from people who already have it, rather than simply not extending it to people who do have it.
Finally, why would allowing people to participate in the democratic system at age 13 make them take an active interest in politics when allowing people to participate in the democratic system at age 18 does not? The root problem is that young people don't really have vested interests yet. They don't have jobs, or property, or children they're sending to school. When the 26th Amendment was passed, they did have the vested interest of not being drafted, I'll give you that, but that went away. Extending the vote to people who have even fewer vested interests won't have the desired effect.
I actually think that lowering the age of majority across the board to around 16 would be a good idea. You'd have to do it sensibly, though. So at age 16, compulsory education is over and you begin two years of national service, but you also immediately get voting and other rights. I can see something like that working.
> Net knowledge growth rate usually decreases significantly with age. You'll likely accumulate more knowledge between now and when you're 75, but certainly not three times more[0].
I was taking that into account, though. I'll probably know two and a half times more by the time I'm 50 ;)