When I saw the title on a Honolulu Advertiser blog about this, I thought the writer had to have been kidding. Let 16 year olds vote? Why? We know why the US lowered the voting age to 18, but those reasons simply don't apply to 16 year olds. The original New York Times editorial that started this debate says that "Legal age requirements should never stand alone. They should be flexible and pragmatic and paired with educational and cognitive requirements for the exercise of legal maturity." I say bah. This is an opinion dressed up as a fact ("Legal age requirements should never stand alone") matched with feel-good words like "flexible," "pragmatic," and "legal maturity." Who wants to be counted as being against these terms? I'll take a shot.
The very example that the author picks - the fact that 16 year olds can drive - undercuts her point: which age group has the highest rate of accidents per mile driven? Teens. According to the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, "The risk of crash per mile driven is thee times higher for 16-19 year olds than for drivers age 65-69." What are states increasingly trying to do (including Hawaii)? Institute graduated drivers licenses to restrict teens from driving by permitting them only to drive during the day, only with a relative in the car, etc. States are becoming more "pragmatic" about teen drivers by being less "flexible" about their options.
The NY Times allows people to comment of their op-ed pieces; those make more sense that the original article.
The Advertiser blog:
http://blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com/quarterlifecafe.php/2008/02/06/lowering_the_voting_age_to_16
The New York Times Op-Ed piece that started this debate:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06kamenetz.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
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I don't think they should allow 16 year olds to vote. I have a teenaged daughter and at 16 she is still learning who she is. They are not psychology ready to help make the decisions as to who should run our country. I think that it should remain at the current age. They are dealing with hormones, boys/girls, and teenage issues at this age. Don't they realize that they have trouble figuring out what they are going to do on Friday night?
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