The age you can start voting is eighteen, but what if the voting age was lowered? What if instead of age eighteen, everyone could start voting at age sixteen. I personally don’t think it would make much of a difference age group wise.
One of the biggest disagreements with letting a sixteen year old vote is their maturity level. To defend against that, everyone becomes mature at different ages and times during their life. Some people become mature at age thirty, others maybe half, like age fifteen . Everyone is their own person when it comes to their maturity development.
People get thrown off with voting at sixteen by the age itself. But if you look at it closely it’s two ages off the already set voting age. Eighteen year olds and sixteen year olds aren’t far apart from age considering that both age groups attend High School. In many circumstances they would even be in the same grade. With all that being said, the life of a sixteen year old is not all that different from an eighteen year old.
There is an organization called Vote16USA that is currently fighting to help lower the voting age to age sixteen. If you go on their website Vote16usa.org you could follow along their journey and mission. They go over the benefits of the cause and how they go about advocating for it.
The organization Vote16USA is a national campaign, organized by Generation Citizen, and supports efforts to lower the voting age on the local level. Now, guided by an Advisory Board and a Youth Advisory Board, the organization aims to help with the coordination of new and current local campaigns around the country while elevating the issue nationally through traditional and social media and by building partnerships with a broad group of stakeholders.
If the voting age were to be lowered by two years it would allow sixteen and seventeen year olds to vote. Which could shift the voting results even more because it will expand the ballot choice to be made by a younger crowd. It’s better to allow younger people to start voting around their teenage years because it will let a younger voice be heard by the country.
Also by lowering the voting age not only sixteen year olds could start voting but also seventeen year olds, and they are one year off the age of eighteen. Some seventeen year olds would be turning eighteen this year and still can’t vote because they won’t turn eighteen before the upcoming election.
The presidents that have been elected are getting older and older because they are selected by an older crowd. The US is currently at their oldest president, Joe Biden who is eighty one years old. If more of a younger population got the chance to vote, I believe we would get a younger president. One reason we would get a younger president is because teens and young adults will feel more relatable to them, or the other way around where a younger president will feel like they will be more relatable to younger adults and teens.
