Should children have the right to vote?
scottaaronson.com
scottaaronson.com
You mention targeted political pressure, but only in a vague sense; it almost seems like foreboding of something unknown, and therefore scary and threatening. It may not be for you, but for people who develop this sense of foreboding about everything unknown, this sort of argument can carry a lot of weight.
Anyway, this pressure already exists. It is how people already have formed political identities when they reach voting age, and are willing to defend them, even irrationally, against people of differing political philosophies. If they don't get it from the parents, or the teachers, or the media, they'll get it from their peers, who will have gotten it from the prior three sources. Protecting them in this sense seems like an almost insurmountable problem.
Or maybe I misunderstood what you mean by political pressure?
I'm not really trying to defend this argument, but if I was going to be a devil's advocate, I'd say that increased exposure to American politics might not be good for juvenile mental health.
On the thought of them being spared all of this, I run into more than a few tweens (wife's sister being one of them), who have taken positions on complex issues anyway, and defend them using the targeted messages TV ads and pundits throw around. Obviously, I'm not implying they understand the context of their arguments -- I can't help but worry most people don't -- but they have already formed an initial opinion about things.
I don't expect you to defend this argument -- it is just me thinking out loud -- but I wonder how much we're already seeing of the juvenile mental health effect of politics, since we seem rather ineffective at protecting them from it.
I believe this is true for most kids.
Given how much it pisses me off, I kinda wish I were still protected from politics.
Put another way: you're trying to deny them the opportunity to make a certain choice (that is, vote) for their own good. That is the definition of protecting someone from them-self.
I was pointing out, simply, that (whether right or wrong), being "protected" from politics is in fact protection from oneself.
Now, you may feel that children should be protected from themselves, whereas women should not. That is a perfectly consistent position. The grandparent seemed to be unclear that that is what you were advocating, and that is the confusion I was clearing up.
BTW, you are also confusing totalitarian with authoritarian. Authoritarians deals with the management structure of a government, totalitarian with the scope of its activities. The US government in 1800 was non-authoritarian, non-totalitarian. Stalin was authoritarian and totalitarian. USG in 2009 is non-authoritarian, totalitarian. Louis the XIV was authoritarian, non-totalitarian.
This provides you are of sufficiently sophisticated mental function to know what concerns you and why. When such sophistication develops is an incredibly hard question; thus far, we have punted, and have decided to use physical ages. This may be the least oppressive way to handle this dilemma, but the cynic in me wonders if we do this only because it is only optimal in a very short-term and fuzzy cost/benefit analysis.
I have vague recollections of a Tea Party thrown to discuss that one...
I agree with the principle of Scott's article (let's have a discussion and see if anything better shows up). Greater discussion may lead to better solutions like using taxation as the measure rather than a civics test.
Perhaps we let too many people vote already? The average American isn't just a little uninformed, but is provably wrong about a number of issues, like what the government spends its money on, who holds the power to do various things, and the resources and governments of our neighbors. Heck, I'd bet that a non-zero percentage of voters don't even understand how the marginal tax rate works.
We don't let unqualified people fix our cars, work in our hospitals, or teach our kids, so why should they have the ability to make our political decisions?
Society has plenty of ways to accredit people to be 'knowledgeable' about these subjects (Basic civics test -> high school diploma -> college degree -> Degree in econ/poli sci -> masters -> phd, or perhaps business owners, workers in gov't service, etc).
We already treat voting as a privilege, not a right, (It can be taken away, as with felons) why not weight votes based on your investment in learning??
Obviously this plan is harebrained in that it would massively disadvantage everyone other than upper class white people, and probably lead to a civil war, but it's interesting to think that voting is probably the one place in society where are an objectively recognized expert in the field (I'm thinking more on the Econ side than the Poli Sci side) has exactly the same say as someone who just picks one at random.
The whole idea that some privileged group has the ability to say whether I can vote makes me a little uneasy, so personally I think I'd give a firm no to the idea.
If you're interested in the idea, the economist Bryan Caplan wrote a book called 'The Myth of the Rational Voter' that discusses the common fallacies and provides hard evidence. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691138737?tag=bryacaplwebp-20&...;
He also has the single ugliest web page that i've ever seen for an academic (a high bar indeed): http://www.bcaplan.com/
However, like you, I find it difficult to think of a non-corrupt test. You certainly don't want SAT scores to be a precondition for voting.
Perhaps in order to vote you have to get x (say 100) people to sign a petition for you? Of course, community leaders would quickly get a pool of 100 people to sign for whoever they wanted. You might be able to prevent that by limiting the number of petitions signed by a person in a given time span.
One way that I can think of to do it would be like so: Start a person at, say, 0.6 votes at 16. Voting in a state or national election = +.1/year, up to two times. Graduation High School or getting a GED = +.1.
So a motivated 18 year old has 1 vote, just like now, slackers are a little behind but not much.
Graduating College, OR 3 Years of Military Service, OR Passing a (Somewhat tough) Written Test of Govt/Econ/International Studies = +0.2
Graduate Degree OR 8 (total) Years of Military Service OR Passing a (LSAT Difficulty) Written Test = +0.2
Graduate Degree in Econ/<Whatever Gov't Applicable Majors> OR 2 Years Gov't Service = +0.1
So a college grad is worth +20% of a 'normal' adult, but twice a high-school dropout nonvoter who's put no effort into it. And someone with a PhD in Economics is only a third of a vote ahead of a college grad, but worth 1.5 18- year-olds, and 2.5 people who've never voted.
Hopefully by keeping the military/service side roughly equal, we could keep the ideological balance about the same.
Intelligent, Motivated non-traditional people, especially those too poor or busy for college could still get to the highest ranks without any cost other than proving that they understand the basics at rough parity.
You're going to get crackpots with degrees/credentials just like you do now, but I'd argue that as a whole, educated people make better decisions with respect to politics (even, I would go so far as to say, in a party agnostic way), so the bad eggs will cancel out.
I'm a voting, high-school educated college dropout myself, but I'd definitely go and learn whatever I would need for the highest level, even if it took a few hours a week for months/years, but I'm also unusually interested in the subject(s).
Once again, the idea is nuts and would never work in the current system, but there's nothing wrong with a little thought experiment =).
There is tension between a hypothesized universal "right" of voting and the use of voting as a real-world method of choosing people to govern a country in a wise manner.
You see this tension when, for example, the ACLU advocates for restoring voting rights to violent felons. Personally I think violent felons have showed remarkably below-average decision making capabilities and I don't see why they should have a voice in running the country. However the ACLU seems to think that removing their voting rights is an affront to human dignity.
For many, democracy has become religion. It is no longer presented as a wise way to run a country. It is simply the unquestionable, universal, and only morally correct method of running a country. That's a dangerously inflexible stasis point for our thoughts to settle in, but that's where we are.
I prefer to avoid discussions that focus on the moral dimensions of voting. I would rather discuss how different government schemes are likely to effect society's well-being. I find these discussions to be much less predictable and more interesting.
Now, a voting test might be a good idea, and I would love to see it applied to adults too. Who knows, it might even elevate the level of political debate in this country to the point where candidates actually discuss substantive policy ideas. Of course, it would only last until an election cycle where women or a minority racial group had a lower than average pass rate, then it would be deemed "evil" and scrapped.
A disclaimer: I got halfway through and stopped when I ran into the giant pile of steaming kneejerk partisan assumptions (Oh look. A "George Bush is evil" quip. How original. Did it take a physicist to come up with that?). I'm bored and disgusted by this level of thinking, and I was somewhat surprised to see it from someone who argued so intelligently up to that point. So, if there is anything interesting after that segment, I missed it.
And any problems from early voters being especially shallow or manipulated by others would be offset, in the long run, by, these same voters in their 20s already having a deeper understanding of the process. A 20something voter with 10+ years of perspective would be better than today's 20something voters.
But I would worry about the combination of public schools and voting children. The school itself would likely be a polling place, and the pressure to both vote and vote in ways the school establishment prefers would be very strong.
So I'd slot the 'teen franchise' somewhere a decade after 'diverse and mostly-privatized K-12 education' on the reform priority queue.
Regardless though, lowering the voting age won't make that much of a difference. The percent of young people that vote is already abysmal. Related note: Why don't we have a polling period that lasts at least a few days? Like Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday?
It also would mean that every polling place would have to keep all of the records, ballots, etc. safe for longer. Imagine if polling places lost the records of who had voted already overnight.
If an adult can't demonstrate knowledge of how our govt works and what civic responsibility means, does said adult get to vote?
BTW - Which definition of "civic responsibility" are we using?
Civic responsibility was mine, not his, but I was thinking in terms of learning about local government and institutions. I just happen to think that our society has a little too much expectation of entitlements and too little of individual responsibility and contribution.
As far as test content (me again), it should be free of current political controversy. How laws are made and passed, but probably not on how to bribe a Senator. Maybe on something on how citizens get change outside of government, but probably more on the voting process. After all voting is the goal of the process.
That seems backwards.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_45/b41070852...
I suppose if you're doing serious paid work -- even as an apprentice -- at age 13, you should also have a full civic franchise at the same time.
Remember that the point is for "universal sufferage". While some youngsters may be responsible enough to vote, I wouldn't trust democracy to most of them.
No pre-frontal cortex, no votey.
The prefrontal cortex is the section of the brain responsible for executive function, impulse control, and long-term decision making. Essentially, a fully-developed prefrontal cortex is what makes an adult an adult. The prefrontal cortex doesn't fully come online until your early to mid-twenties (this is why all of these rights are generally around the same age, 18-21...unless one wants to suggest that we picked those ages out of a hat).
Most children do not have a fully-developed prefrontal cortex. Therefore it is in their and society's best interest to prohibit them from making long-term decisions, since they really don't have the equipment to make lucid choices about the distant future.
So if you're looking for a criterion for voter eligibility, it should be the presence of a developed prefrontal cortex, not age, and certainly not a goddamn civics test (at 17, I would have gotten a hardon at the idea of being legally able to drink if I only had to pass a written exam testing my knowledge of alcohol). Since AFAIK we don't have any real, cost-effective test for whether a person has a prefrontal cortex, chronological age is a passable approximation.
I'm all for classical liberalism, but let's not be naive and throw common sense out the window - anyone who thinks 12-14 year olds should have the right to vote doesn't remember what it was like to be 12-14 years old. Christ, every single person who I respect and consider intelligent and knew when they were 12-14 would have voted for any candidate who promised that we would see boobies during their term in office.
The reason 12-14 years olds seem immature is a social one, and NOT a brain one. I come from a rather different social culture and in my social circle a 12-14 year old was more or less an adult - and we acted that way.
If you assume someone under 18 is a kid - they will act like a kid, if you assume they are an adult, they will act like an adult.
For every kid it was different, the range is about 12-15, but by then there were no longer any dramatic differences in maturity, and further changes are gradual and more importantly life long, i.e. the changes don't magically stop at 18.
By the traditional age of puberty (i.e. not todays accelerated age) all kids are mentally mature. But the social environment in the US isn't conducive to that, instead kids are told you are under 18 so act like a kid.
(And you got downvoted for saying kids don't have a pre-frontal cortex which is nonsense, if you had said less mature I would have let it go.)
And BTW my experience is supported by literature, at least based on an article I read about 2 years ago in 'scientific american mind' (which I tried to find but couldn't).
It's not accidental that the age of majority has crept up and up over the years. Basically people try to set the age so that everyone is mature by that point, but of course 95% of people are mature before that - but are told, don't bother. So they don't and the age creeps upward.
Repeat over the years and it keeps going up. In antiquity majority was 12, about 100 to 200 years ago it was 15. Today you find 25 years old living like teenagers used to.
If you assume someone under 18 is a kid - they will act like a kid, if you assume they are an adult, they will act like an adult."
That's idealistic, naive nonsense, for at least three reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
1) Take a six-year-old and start treating them as an adult and expecting them to act like one, and observe their behavior (my hypothesis: the child will behave like a slightly-more-mature-than-average six-year-old)
2) Do a survey of people who ran away or were kicked out of their houses at very early ages (let's say 15 or earlier) for traits and psychological health. (my hypothesis: you'll find significantly higher than average drug use, addiction, depression, and other psychological disorders than in a random population).
3) Take a forty-year-old male (who satisfies both of our criteria for maturity: my criterion that he has a fully-developed prefrontal cortex, and your criterion that society "assumes he is an adult" and treats him like one). Now remove his prefrontal cortex. Your argument hypothesizes that he will still be an adult, since the criterion that is important to you - society treating him like an adult - remains unchanged. However, this has actually happened many times. It's called a prefrontal lobotomy, and its effects are well-known - it basically turns an adult into a child. Therefore, the prefrontal cortex has much more to do with what we know as "maturity" than social treatment. (and if you want to be clever and say "well those who get a prefrontal lobotomy are usually severely retarded or mentally ill and thus not treated as adults before the operation," then just remember good old Phineas Gage. Treated as an adult right up until the railroad spike went through his head, and then basically became an impulsive child.)
"(And you got downvoted for saying kids don't have a pre-frontal cortex which is nonsense, if you had said less mature I would have let it go.)"
Wrong; it is a fact that children do not have a fully-developed prefrontal cortex. It can take as late as the mid-twenties to come online, and as late as the early thirties to fully myelinate.
Social expectations have very little to do with capacity for long-term decision-making. It's biological - you either have the equipment or you don't. My argument is based on what we know about the brain and on experiments already performed or whose results will be pretty damn obvious; yours is an argument by assertion based on blank-slate idealism and one article in Scientific American Mind which you can't find.
I know which way I'm betting, personally.
All hell did not break loose.
The conservative candidate who actually reached out to the teens got more of their vote (surprise).
Of course, everyone's been angry with the liberals and socialists who did nothing but bicker until the coalition fell apart, so that may have something to do with it, too.
That said, he does make some good point on this particular issue about minor's rights. Maybe lower the voting age to 16? Like if you are old enough to drive, you are old enough to vote. Of course this would be good for the GOP since children engaged enough to vote at that age would often be copying their parents, who could be Rush Limbaugh "ditto-heads" or the like. Nevertheless, I would be open to allowing the voting age to be 16.
Still though it is astounding to me that people who think time is a fundamental property are taken seriously in academia. That is sooo 19th century. I really don't have the time for such folks.