The push to lower the voting age to 16 has finally paid off for Democrats in Vermont. A new law allows 16- and 17-year-olds to participate in municipal elections – both as voters and candidates! So the tried and true old enough for (something), old enough to vote argument won out again, but what does that mean for the future of Vermont and, potentially, the nation?
Congress passed an amendment to the 1965 voting rights act that lowered the minimum age to 18, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1970. On March 10, 1971, the Senate, made up of 54 Democrats, 44 Republicans, an Independent, and a Conservative, voted unanimously for the 26th Amendment. The Democrat-controlled House voted overwhelmingly in support, and, following a mere two months for ratification by the required 38 states, Republican President Richard Nixon signed it. It was the fastest any amendment ever found its way into the Constitution.
Proponents of the teen vote argue that anyone old enough to drive, work, and pay taxes is old enough to vote – but where’s the overwhelming bipartisan support? Could it be that “fight, kill, and die” carry more weight than “drive, work, and pay taxes”?
Get Out and Vote – Consequences Be Damned
(Photo by Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, a Democrat from Brattleboro, VT, said that getting more young people to vote will keep them politically involved. History shows that, at least for a time, that’s probably true. The 1972 elections saw a 55.4% youth turnout – but it dropped steadily in the years that followed, reaching a low of 36% in 1988. Efforts to drive America’s youngest demographic to vote have enjoyed some success – the rebound in 18- to 24-year-olds helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992, and Barack Obama certainly seemed to benefit from the 49% who voted in the 2008 election.
It's generally expected that most younger voters will support Democrat candidates and progressive policies. But what will the newly minted “adults” aged 16 and 17 do now that they hold the power? It has been said that all politics is local. These kids voting and holding office in the Vermont town of Brattleboro will help decide local issues. That can easily grow to the state level. While no amount of progressive law in Vermont can change the age requirements for federal elections, it certainly can lead to the senators and representatives sent by the Green Mountain State to Washington being influenced by children who, in most cases, can’t even be tried as adults should they break the law.
16 Is the New 21?
The legal age to buy alcohol and tobacco is 21. Woke companies, like Walmart and Dick’s, have raised their own minimum purchase age for firearms and ammunition to 21 – a move Democrats have hoped to make through legislation for years. It’s enough to make one assume adulthood begins at age 21. But wait, what about all those young adults 18, 19, and 20 years old, who can join the military and go to war – or the young men who are required, under penalty of law, to register for Selective Service?
Surely anyone who’s old enough to be conscripted into a war without his consent is old enough to vote, right? It’s the same argument made by many a young man hoping for a drink or – after the 2019 federal law that raised the tobacco purchase age – a smoke, though with no legal, and very little practical, success. It worked, though, for the vote. The 26th Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971, and the Republicans backed it wholeheartedly.
The first-ever draft in the United States occurred during World War II – and it was FDR who signed the law expanding the draft range from 21-36 to 18-37. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had led many of these 18-20-year-old draftees to victory in Europe in 1945, declared in his 1954 State of the Union address: “For years, our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.
These youngsters are seen by society and the law as so immature that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their mistakes on an adult level. But they’re grown enough to create policies, regulations, and, perhaps someday, state or even federal laws that affect everyone else?
