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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

Personally I think it’s more important to increase the voting age than to prevent elderly candidates. Democracy is only as good as the participants. And the human brain does not mature until closer to 30. That’s also when people have gone through more of life’s big steps and can have better perspective on the world to make better decisions. I simply don’t understand the push from some to lower the age, as it will result in worse decisions in our system. The only reason I can see for lowering the age is to favor one side or the other at that time.

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The voting age used to be 21 in the US and people got mad after being repeatedly drafted into pointless wars by congress. If you're going to die in vietnam or a random hole in europe, at least you can vote on it now.

I remember when I first voted at 18, thinking that I'd be pissed if I were old enough to die fighting a war, but not old enough to elect the people that drafted me in the first place.

Unfortunately for you, the vast majority of people who riot are between 18 to 30. And they'd be right to riot.

> And they'd be right to riot.

Care to explain? I can make assumptions but I will probably not have the same interpretation you have.

I think they're making the false assumption that only the effected parties would be out protesting.

I mean, I'm in my 50s and I'd be out in the streets throwing down with the cops if they took away the right to vote from a significant portion of the population.

Don’t most people under 30 not vote anyway? I don’t see how this would matter much in practice

There may be an argument that reducing the voting age could result in more politically engaged under-30s (and eventually, over-30s).

At 18 most people have too much going on (high school graduation coming up, studying for and applying to college and/or looking into employment, potentially seeking housing if their parents are kicking them out, etc) to have much capacity for political participation. That picture is significantly different just a couple of years earlier, where time and mental bandwidth is generally at more of a surplus, and so if people became capable of voting at that age it stands to reason that more would take advantage of it (and continue to after that).

The argument doesn't need to be about political engagement, it's about liberty.

Denying the vote to a thoughtful 16 year old is worse than giving the vote to a 29 year old that takes it for granted. And then same thing applies to a 2 year old, if they can independently mark the ballot...

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