What if the voting age was 13?
December 29, 2020
It’s a silly concept to think about, but what if the United States, on some random whim, changed the voting age to 13? Would you be against or for it?
Most people would quickly say against because when people are 13, they’re still in middle school, they have no experience in the real world, and aren’t smart enough to make an educated vote. Think about this: the minimum voting age as of now in the United States is 18, and every voter is out of high school or about to leave. An 18-year-old’s priorities are college, jobs, and the economy. A 13-year-old’s priority is whether they’re gonna have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. They are also oblivious to the flaws of the modern education system, but they are also the people who understand it the most. No one is fighting for their priorities, they’re humans too, they should be valued as much as any other citizen. Now, my point is not saying that we should lower the voting age to 13, rather that people who are eligible to vote are not focusing on the priorities of other people, the generation younger than them. The people fighting and rallying to have their voices heard since they cannot legally vote. No one is fighting for the younger generation to have a future.
My proposed solution is that we lower the voting age to 16 or 17, around the time high schoolers begin to enter the workforce. They have the knowledge of what school feels like more than any other adult but are also paying taxes. The current issue is that teens are paying taxes to the government but are not allowed to vote for who represents them, literally “taxation without representation” but once you start to pay taxes, you are contributing to the economy, and paying for the roads that pave the streets of America. With this, we need to improve our education system, teach the upcoming generations the important things. Instead of teaching teens how to find the hypotenuse of a right triangle, teach teens how the economy works and how to deal with taxes. If we do this, we create a more educated society as a whole.
In order for the US to be able to lower the voting age is to improve our education system, which is very hard to do since none of the eligible voters understand the current education system. Lowering the voting age will hopefully improve our education system by younger generations voting in people who will rebuild it, therefore creating more educated teenagers to vote in the elections. Of course, this is just a hypothetical, but when you really think about it, who is fighting for the kids who cannot be heard?
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