(Note: This article is satirical.)
Some people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. I’m one of those people. I’d also throw most of my friends into that category. In fact, of the 218 million eligible voters in the U.S., I think 25 million of us should be disenfranchised, and all for the same reason: We’re between the ages 18 and 24. The truth is that young people aren’t fit for voting, which is why a constitutional amendment needs to be passed raising the voting age to 25.
I realize that most people reading this will disagree. If you’re over 25, you’ve probably forgotten how poor your judgment was when you were younger. If you’re under 25, you probably don’t realize how poor your judgment is now. In either case, you’re wrong. A recent Harvard study revealed that the frontal lobe — the part of the brain that controls reasoning and judgment — remains largely undeveloped until well into a person’s twenties.
Good judgment is the lifeblood of democracy. We don’t let ten-year-olds vote because we know they don’t have good judgment. The current voting age (18) is predicated on the assumption that 18-year-olds have good judgment. Now that we know they don’t, why not adjust the voting age accordingly? At the very least, we should re-evaluate whether allowing teenagers to vote makes sense.
I don’t think it does. The 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 when it was ratified in 1971, was largely an attempt to placate young people who were upset about the Vietnam War. At the time, proponents argued that if young people could be drafted, they should be able to vote on whether their country went to war. But the Vietnam War is over and the “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” line makes much less sense now that the draft has been abolished. In any case, the argument that people who are eligible to serve in the military should also be eligible to vote was always a bit of a non sequitur. As the editorial board of the New York Times put it in 1967, “The requirements for a good soldier and for a good voter are not the same. For the soldier, youthful enthusiasm and physical endurance are of primary importance; for the voter, maturity of judgment far outweighs other qualifications.”
Few modern liberals are even willing to consider raising the voting age. Some favor lowering it even further. Many of those same liberals call themselves “pro-science” and deride conservatives as “anti-science.” Now is their opportunity to prove their pro-science credentials. But will liberals stand up for science when doing so doesn’t further their agenda? I’m not holding my breath.
Raising the voting age to 25 would disenfranchise me, most of my friends, and the majority of the people who work for The Daily Caller. But the future of our country is too important to leave in the hands of my peers — at least until our frontal lobes are fully developed.
Peter Tucci is an editor at The Daily Caller.
