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> Why can't younger people vote? Because they don't have valid opinions?

Because society has a long-standing agreement that a phase of life called "childhood" exists, during which an individual is not fully developed and can't be trusted to make decisions about his or her future. It may be somewhat arbitrarily defined at 18, but I don't see why people who need to be protected against entering into contracts as well as receiving a slew of rights and protections can be expected to have meaningful input into the management of their country. Someone who can't even join the military could vote to send their older fellow countrymen into war. I find the idea that the voting age can be lower than the age of majority very strange, and I have strong doubts that the age of majority should be lowered to 16 - on account of protecting childhood.

> This seems to affect our dramatically in our modern era, as many of our older folks are still around and skewing the generational differences towards conservatism.

Wait, what. You meant to come out against ageism, then you criticize old people for voting "wrong"?

All in all, if you take a step back from you criticisms, there's a common point: Legitimacy. Submitting a ballot every few years is a very weak foundation for a government as sprawling and powerful as most modern and western ones. Fiddling the knobs of who can vote does little more than shift the balance of power inside the political class.

> Wait, what. You meant to come out against ageism, then you criticize old people for voting "wrong"?

No, I'm simply pointing out that in this day and age, we have more older people voicing their opinion. This leads to policies that favor this group and disadvantages other groups (youth).

I think Thomas Jefferson had much to say on the tyranny of one generation to the next.

> All in all, if you take a step back from you criticisms, there's a common point: Legitimacy. Submitting a ballot every few years is a very weak foundation for a government as sprawling and powerful as most modern and western ones. Fiddling the knobs of who can vote does little more than shift the balance of power inside the political class.

Agreed. However youth suffrage is an important topic. You say that society needs to protect childhood, but to me, it seems like they're protecting them from their own opinions and values... Like the article mentions.

Even if we grant the notion of childhood as valid (one which I agree with, but am open to other models - the idea that one turns 18 and is suddenly a different person has weird impacts), we are seeing a systemic erosion of the notion. One which makes the GP's question valid.

I mean that the very idea of 18 == adulthood is going away. For instance, more and more people over the age of 13 but under the age of 18 are being prosecuted as adults in criminal cases. Zero tolerance policies for kids of all ages are assuming that they are capable of making choices with life altering consequences, but only in negative ways. So for some actions - adult understanding of the world is assumed much younger than the age of 18. On the other hand, we are seeing the infantilization of people older than 18 - drinking age is 21, car rental 25, college policies are becoming more and more like those of high-school, college campus law enforcement is becoming less and less tolerant of "young people behavior" (e.g. parties and festivals). It is a weird set of standards that sends a strange message. Those that conform well are placed in a class that can fully enjoy the rewards of membership eventually, and those that don't or make mistakes are placed in a different class, one with many restrictions.

Basically I'm saying that while the notions of adulthood and childhood aren't bad, the implementation brings them into question.

Your examples of blurring childhood and adulthood are mostly answerable (however poorly) by saying "well, these things may be increasingly happening, but they Shouldn't Happen and we should work on fixing that".

Here's an example that can't be thus answered. Should a minor pay income taxes, if they have enough income? I think most people would say yes. But then tell me again why they can't vote?

Exactly. Taxation without representation is extortion.

Hi, just wanted to say that if you lost a point of karma on this post, it was because I accidentally clicked downvote. Pure accident, really, because I actually think everyone in this thread should be heading over to youthrights.org and reading a bunch of their literature right now. This issue has festered outside the adult-public consciousness for far too long.

National Youth Rights Association (for Americans): http://www.youthrights.org

I don't think that minors can get that much income because their employment is very limited, and they cannot enter into business contracts.

Minors can de facto have arbitrarily large incomes from investments, although typically the investments are structured as trusts and are not legally the property of the minor.

Besides, child movie stars.

Car rental age limits are not legal restrictions, but just the rental companies' response to very clear accident statistics.

Some rental companies allow younger drivers to rent, but they charge them a lot more.

Someone who can't even join the military could vote to send their older fellow countrymen into war.

On the other hand, when someone who can't even join the military (e.g. folks over 30) could vote to send their younger fellow countrymen into war, no one thinks twice.

(I think 30 is the age at which you are too old to join the military, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

The age seems to range from 27 to 42 with exemptions for those with prior military experience. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/f/faqenlag...

Within the branches I know that more interesting/selective active duty branches have lower requirements. For example, active duty Navy is 34 but Navy Seals' cap is 28.

None of this takes away from your point since there are plenty of voters older than 42.

The problem with that is that there's also this thing called "adolescence" where children have to actually learn how to be adults, and like almost everything else in life, the way you become good at being an adult is to be bad at being an adult and not letting that stop you.

Don't worry too much about kids taking over the country -- voter participation by people younger than 40 is so low that you could drop the voting age to zero and it wouldn't affect the results that much.

> Don't worry too much about kids taking over the country -- voter participation by people younger than 40 is so low that you could drop the voting age to zero and it wouldn't affect the results that much.

Well then let's do that. Seriously. Making assumptions on participation for youths in elections is akin to making assumptions on how women would vote before Women's Suffrage. While you may be correct, it's impossible to say that they're apathetic for such and such reasons when they're not even allowed to vote until the age of 18.

It's worth thinking through the actual impact on behavior that a lower voting age would bring.

I tend to think it's a bad idea because of how it would change behavior of some adults who interact with children.

As adults, if we want to do more than just voting, we can go door-to-door talking to voters, for example. We can put up posters, or make calls. If another voter isn't convinced, they can just say so; if they don't even want to talk, they can close the door or hang up the phone.

But children are often captive audiences. They are surrounded by adults (adult family members, teachers, etc.) who can and do tell them what to do, and there are consequences if they fight back. Sure, you can lie to Dad and say "sure, I voted for your guy", but what if he catches you lying and actually kicks you out of the house like he said he would? A teacher probably wouldn't outright tell students how to vote. But... they'd certainly have a much bigger incentive to teach them good political thinking, for the teacher's value of "good". There are already church leaders who outright tell their congregations how God wants them to vote. Do we want to point that kind of crap at kids as well?

A lot of adults wouldn't abuse their power, of course. Currently, children can't vote, so they have far less incentive to abuse it in this way.

On the ageism question, 18 is the general age where we welcome people into American society as adults -- not just voting but also army service and criminal liability. I'm not opposed to moving the voting age earlier but it should be in conjunction with those other responsibilities.

You're kind of begging the question on the other two -- you've assumed your hypotheses, making it hard to disentangle. For example, you're assuming Americans haven't confronted the fact that war kills lots of people -- I don't know that's clearly the case. You're right on the cliff of using the word "sheeple."

One thing I will question -- are populist governments (which you seem to desire) really a solution to the issues of authoritarianism and repression? A movement that seems to have contempt for as many people as the populist movement does seems like it could easily degenerate into its own tyranny and purging.

The alignment of the two ages is actually pretty recent, at least in the US. Traditionally, military conscription age was 18, while voting was 21. It was moved (in 1971) due to agitation from people who argued that it was unethical to conscript people to die for their country, but not trust the same people to vote for their leaders. But that's merely an argument for why voting age should be <= conscription age, not necessarily an argument that it should be ==.

I think it a pretty good argument that the voting age should be less than the conscription age by enough that the person conscription has had a chance to participate in the voting that led to the government which is conscripting them. It sets the order of events more in line with a hypothetical ideal social contract to which one agrees by one's actions and then owes such a high price to.

>They're all apart of the council on foreign relations... This in my opinion, is why we won't change...

So was Carl Sagan, Angelina Jolie, Paul Krugman, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brokaw, Aaron Ross Sorkin, etc etc.

The CFR is a collection of influential Americans who meet to discuss and influence policy on the gamut of topics. It isn't a place where the Illuminati lizard-people meet to perform occult rituals and determine how to enslave the population of the earth, despite how the interwebs tries to paint that picture.

It's hard to say they have any specific agenda when you actually read some of the (vast amounts) of work they produce. You are welcome to disagree with their policies, but don't act like they're some powerful entity that's ruining the world. It's incredibly naive.

>Expect less worker rights, more outsourcing, more free trade, more deficits

So, on the one hand you criticize others for apathy, but on the other you criticize outsourcing, which moves jobs into the capable hands of the denizens of other, poorer countries, rather than hording them in your own country; free trade, which is hugely beneficial to everyone involved, always, provided everyone actually practices it; and (I assume governmental) deficits. Why are there high deficits, currently? Oh yeah, social safety net. Should we get rid of that?

My point is, these subjects (even TBTF) aren't black and white.

> Why are there high deficits, currently? Oh yeah, social safety net.

Yes, because it's definitely not military and espionage expenditure or subsidies for corporations.

> My point is, these subjects (even TBTF) aren't black and white.

While I agree with you B&W point, I feel like too big to fail is a failure in management of the economy. To let companies become so big as to effect the entire economy so negatively if they fail is disastrous. The government is propping up/keeping afloat monopolies.

In my opinion, The US is at 0% interest rates, is still in a recession, and can't possibly do anything else in regards to inflationary measures (printing money) without the negative affect on it's position as the world reserve currency.

http://youtu.be/PHe0bXAIuk0?t=13m36s <- Notice how the US is on target for a depression according to many economists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMHmTyJXcy0&feature=c4-overvi... <- Here's a great talk regarding quantum easing and how unless the government can start more drastic measures, the economy will tank.

I'd like to heard your defense for the status quo, and also how you believe that social safety nets created in the 40's has anything to do with our crises of 2008.

Actually, expenditures on the social safety net dwarf everything else, including military expenditures.

The CFR is a collection of influential Americans who meet to discuss and influence policy on the gamut of topics. It isn't a place where the Illuminati lizard-people meet to perform occult rituals and determine how to enslave the population of the earth, despite how the interwebs tries to paint that picture.

It's hard to say they have any specific agenda when you actually read some of the (vast amounts) of work they produce.

It's not that hard at all. They are very clearly economic neoliberals, moral/social moderates, and foreign-policy hawks. These positions are coherently expressed in all their literature, even if their membership varies in just how ardent/extreme or quiet/moderate they want to be about expressing and imposing their ideology.

Why can't younger people vote? I think this breaks into two separate questions: Why don't younger people vote very much and what can we do to encourage that. And, why do we stop 16 year olds from voting? Here is one Labour policy I'm very much in favour of: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-party-a...

Why do we feel it necessary to have a political class at all? More generally, why do we have representative democracy at all? We have the internet. It's now technically possible for everyone to vote on every issue, or even to have everyone collaborate on drafting new laws.

> We have the internet

About that... say some of us did set up a usable and scalable direct democracy mechanism on the Internet. Say we get the massive user-base this deserves for some currently existing nation. Imagine for some random piece of psuedolegislation, we got some law passed in said system such that it succeeds with an unprecedented turnout and majority lead. At what point does that stop being just a petition but the actual law. A near impossible feat, but when military turnout reaches a certain percentage, I think at some point we have something going.

More realistically, why not create the software and infrastructure and start pitching this to some cities, counties, maybe even states/provinces to start doing this? It could at least be informative and entertaining.

More practicalaly, the biggest issue I see is in the security of it. How could identity be handled? Integrity? etc, etc. #trust

I say, let's get started anyway. We'll probably want to have some failure under our belt anyway by the time there's a real demand (assuming I'm psychic ;)

I think my point is, it's up to us. We are the people.

Security depends on people's willingness to participate. Democracies have solved these issues with primitive means in the past. It certainly can be done, would be an interesting experiment to say the least.

People are working on this. See for instance Aktiv Demokrati in Sweden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktiv_Demokrati

The basic idea is that each person has a vote, and all matters should be resolved by a public vote. Since not everybody may have time and resources to vote responsibly in every matter, the vote can be delegated to someone else. It is easy to imagine how every person could delegate his or her vote to different people in different matters.

Going down this road, sometime you have to consider the question of actual motions and matters to vote upon. Who drafts these? Well, it should be the people who suggests questions to vote upon, and the people who decides which questions are most important -- by voting on them.

Then, the people should discuss the matter. Each person can voice their opinion, but also vote on the opinions of others. After a good discussion, with many arguments back and forth, it is time to vote.

But, alas! The matter has already been resolved. The most popular arguments have surfaced to the top, with the corresponding caveats and so on. This discussion is the perfect basis for drafting whatever law or resolving whatever matter was under question.

Now, this all sounds very similar to Reddit, or Hacker News. Basically, this is how the political process would work. Note that not all of what I have discussed here is a part of Aktiv Demokrati or their system. It's more of a summary of my own thoughts on the matter.

I'm having trouble imagining how the delegation mechanism works unless it's just incredibly broad[1].

To wit, how do I delegate my 2024 vote on whether or not to allow unaglisivation[2] to be legal or not? Political issues are emergent phenomena, and that would seem to be a problem with such a delegation system. It seems like it might be better to just mandate voting, or tie it to some basket of broadly sought after government gated entitlements, such as driver's licenses, etc. so as to make it generally more inconvenient not to vote than to vote[3].

[1]Obviously "incredibly broad" is not going to be very broad in relation to the current US vote delegation system which is pretty much "delegate all of my decisions to X", but if you're talking about creating a brand new system harnessing the power of information systems that didn't exist in the late 1700s, there's not much reason to constrain yourself to comparisons with such an archaic system.

[2]This is a made up term

[3]Though in such a coercive voting system, I think you would have to randomize option placement and offer a "no opinion" option for every issue so as not to unduly skew the results by the people who really do not want to vote, or don't feel well enough informed on a particular issue.

[edit to add footnote [1] and for clarity]

Sorry for the late reply.

I'm not quite sure I get your point, but I think it stems from a misunderstanding about the delegation. In my mind, this is very fluctuating. Let's say all questions are divided among departments, similar to today. Now, perhaps I I have delegated my vote on all questions of agriculture (which obviously unaglisivation falls under) to you.

This means that you carry my vote, until I either remove my support from you henceforth, or I vote differently in a particular matter. So, I have simply delegated all matters of agriculture to you on auto-pilot, but I can change that whenever I want -- including during a vote (which in this system must take some time, perhaps on the order of weeks, or indeed indefinitely, until a matter is resolved).

The system is inspired a little bit by the great John Byrne story "The Trial of Reed Richards".

> And, why do we stop 16 year olds from voting? Here is one Labour policy I'm very much in favour of:

Meh. That's as naked politicking as if the Tories suggested double votes for land owners or higher rate tax payers.

Tell us [the audience] why allowing disenfranchised people to vote is the same as allowing some people to vote twice.

> Tell us

Oh, I apologise, I didn't realize you're royal.

> allowing disenfranchised people to vote

16 year olds aren't exactly disenfranchised, and to the extend they are, they're not more disenfranchised than higher rate tax payers who pay a disproportionate amount of the taxes that everybody benefits from, but are actually in a minority of voters.

For the record, my point is illustrating the arbitrariness of being "disenfranchised", not arguing for extra votes for the rich.

16 year olds aren't exactly disenfranchised

In the UK and US they are very exactly disenfranchised.

they're not more disenfranchised than higher rate tax payers who pay a disproportionate amount of the taxes

They are disenfranchised, and higher rate tax payers are not. Anyway, enough niggling over what words mean.

There is a actual problem here which is that old people are disproportionately overrepresented, and this is why for example none of the "we're all in it together" cuts are going to affect pensioners. How do we solve that specific problem? One way is to get more 18+ young people to vote. Another way would be to allow 16+ to vote and ensure that they are taken from school to the voting booth. It has been shown[1] that you're more likely to vote in elections if you vote the first time.

[1] http://www.ippr.org/press-releases/111/11175/young-voters-sh...

You're not niggling over what "disenfranchised" means, you're just declaring your definition to be canon.

> old people are disproportionately overrepresented

How? For each one "old person", there is "one vote". That is the same proportional representation that every other adult gets.

> Another way would be to allow 16+ to vote and ensure that they are taken from school to the voting booth

How very democratic of you. These youngsters are old enough to decide what to vote, but not old enough if they care enough to actually vote?

> How do we solve that specific problem?

The specific problem being that the democratic process gets a result you don't agree with, and so your suggested solution is to change the democratic system to one more likely to return a result you agree with? Your strong commitment to democratic principles is showing.

We have to agree on the standard definitions of words, otherwise conversation cannot take place.

Now, as life spans are getting longer, that means naturally that there will be more and more older people. It's simply fairer that we should try to increase the pool of younger people voting, and also increase the retirement age, in order to make sure we don't continue to have a huge pool of non-working old people block-voting for their own benefits.

Of course there are limits (you can't have 8 y.o. children voting) but that doesn't mean we don't work where possible to make the system fairer and get more people to vote (ie. more, and livelier and more direct democracy).

> It's simply fairer that we should try to increase the pool of younger people voting, and also increase the retirement age, in order to make sure we don't continue to have a huge pool of non-working old people block-voting for their own benefits.

I don't see the "fairness" issue here. What I do see is that you have clear policy preferences, judge a certain class of people would likely vote contrary to that preference, and therefore want to get more voters who you assume will be more likely to share your policy preferences rather than the policy preferences you attribute to "non-working old people".

IOW, rather than selling your ideas, you just want to stack the deck.

Is there any way of changing the definition of voter eligibility without someone being able to accuse someone else of stacking the deck?

> Is there any way of changing the definition of voter eligibility without someone being able to accuse someone else of stacking the deck?

There's a difference between situations where an such an accusation is a potential accusation which may or may not reflect the actual motivation (which, yes, is true for pretty much any change in voter eligibility) and situations where the change in voter eligibility has the sole stated motivation of using a new voter group to offset the specific presumed policy preferences of an identified existing group (such as where the justification is "...in order to make sure we don't continue to have a huge pool of non-working old people block-voting for their own benefits"), in which case its not an "accusation", its the overtly proclaimed motivation for the change.

Yes, that's true. But then the reply is: if you don't want to give young people the vote, and if you're afraid of how young people would vote, why are you subjecting young people to your laws?

You subject millions of young people to an authoritarian (in fact, sometimes downright totalitarian) regime and disenfranchisement on a daily basis and nobody cares because it's part of the plan. But build one little settlement in Occupied Palestinian Territory, and suddenly, everyone loses their minds!

And frankly, no, I'm not going to apologize for that comparison, because at least people are out there pointing out that Palestinian Arabs deserve freedom, self-determination, and human rights. In fact, to be even more of a blatant asshole about it, the oppression of Western youth may be a lesser oppression than a serious military occupation, but there's a hell of a lot more of them. Shut up and multiply ;-)!

/trollface.jpg

> But then the reply is: if you don't want to give young people the vote, and if you're afraid of how young people would vote, why are you subjecting young people to your laws?

That's not really a reply (except insofar as a non-sequitur is a "reply"), that's a completely different and unrelated argument for youth voting from the one offered previously about the desirability of offsetting a presumed voting preference of retirees.

And the response ot that is that you yourself have argued that a line must be drawn somewhere on how young people can vote, saying, "Of course there are limits (you can't have 8 y.o. children voting)",, and you haven't yet provided an argument for why the current line (18 years old) is the wrong place to draw the line, or proposed any criteria for deciding where to draw the line, just presented a lot of hyperventilating about "oppression" and a bizarre analogy to the military occupation of Palestine.

As such, you haven't yet presented even a coherent position to discuss.

I'm not the one who argued in favor of drawing a line, actually. I'm all in favor of letting 8-year-olds vote.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

In the large, 8 year olds will vote the way their parents want them to, and the demographics of the voting bloc you'd have just massively enhanced does not favor your particular political positions.

Disenfranchised means not allowed to vote. Your reply doesn't make any sense at all, unless you're using a different definition.

16 year olds aren't exactly disenfranchised

Of course they are. They don't have the vote, but are still subject to all laws and taxes in full.

Today's 16 year olds are by far not mature in thought enough to vote. Sorry no.

I paid income tax when I was 16. I should have been allowed to vote.

Conversely, you could say that half the adult population is not mature enough to vote. Or how about your logic applied to Women during the Women's Suffrage movement. They didn't work as much or were as educated back then. Maybe they shouldn't vote- oh wait, nevermind. They were disenfranchised.

What about African Americans in the 1700's? Again, on average less educated and "mature" as one might say due to being a disenfranchised population.

The funniest thing about your vote, is that in 2 years from 16, they somehow magically become mature enough...

Children are biologically not the same as adults, in ways that directly bear on decision-making. The more we learn about how the brain develops, the more clear this becomes.

The reverse is true of black people and adult women: the more learn about the brains of these adults, the less proof we find for any differences in potential brain function.

This is why we treat the decisions of children more lightly than we do the decision of adults. This is a good thing, societally; otherwise millions of children could routinely be imprisoned for assault and battery due to common schoolyard shenanigans.

Representative democracy is not a technical solution. It was not a hack to overcome the lack of real-time communications.

It was chosen in full knowledge of the downside of direct democracy, which is mob rule.

I don't understand how someone can watch the online witch hunts on, say, Reddit, and think "I wish that had the force of law."