Young people shouldn’t have the right to vote, even if it means taking away his own ability to cast ballots in elections, writes Peter Tucci, an editor at The Daily Caller, a conservative website.

 

Tucci believes the 25 million Americans age 18-24 should be disenfranchised because “young people aren’t fit for voting.” He argues that people this age have poor judgment when it comes to voting and politics, thanks in part to undeveloped frontal lobes, the part of the brain that controls reasoning and judgment. Tucci cites a Harvard study that found frontal lobes remain “largely undeveloped until well into a person’s twenties.”

 

“Good judgment is the lifeblood of democracy,” he writes. “We don’t let ten-year-olds vote because we know they don’t have good judgment. The current voting age (18) is predicated on the assumption that 18-year-olds have good judgment. Now that we know they don’t, why not adjust the voting age accordingly? At the very least, we should re-evaluate whether allowing teenagers to vote makes sense.”

 

Tucci says the adoption of the 26th Amendment in 1971 that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 was “largely an attempt to placate young people who were upset about the Vietnam War.” Then, it was difficult not to let young people vote since they were being drafted into the military to fight the war.

 

“But the Vietnam War is over and the ‘old enough to fight, old enough to vote’ line makes much less sense now that the draft has been abolished,” Tucci concludes.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Raise the Voting Age to 25 (by Peter Tucci, Daily Caller)

Lower the Voting Age to 17: Nancy Lublin (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)