This has nothing to do with giving young adults the civic right to vote. It’s all about getting more to vote the Progressive or Marxist way. There is a reason that originally the Founding Fathers only let land owners vote. They were the responsible ones… the ones who had the most common sense and had the most to lose. Then came the right to vote if you were 18 or older for everyone. This again was to simply create more voters, especially the young who are easily swayed. Many of these voters have no skin in the game and they vote on who they think is most popular or coolest. That’s a recipe for constitutional destruction and tyranny. It figures that Washington, DC is doing this. It is the gutter of the nation and they are scraping the bottom for support.
From The Daily Nebraskan:
For 16-year-olds in Washington, D.C., a sweet 16 birthday may soon mean more than just getting a driver’s license.
Three D.C. City Council members are trying to give 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds in the capital city the ability to vote in federal elections. If the Youth Vote Amendment Act of 2015 passed, these citizens would be able to vote in the upcoming 2016 presidential election.
This wouldn’t be the first time citizens under 18 were given the right to vote in our country. Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed 16-year-olds to vote in municipal elections since 2013. San Francisco is also looking to lower the voting age for state and local elections; lawmakers are working on having a referendum ready by next year. D.C. would be the first to allow citizens this young to vote in federal elections, though.
According to the 26th Amendment, it’s not unconstitutional to give citizens younger than 18 the right to vote. The amendment reads “the right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.”
Dona-Gene Barton, a political science associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that lowering the voting age may help increase civic involvement in youth.
“If we can get younger voters involved at an earlier age that they might then continue this pattern of voting,” she said. “There’s research that shows that voting can become a habit. If you can get people into the habit of voting earlier in their lives, this may be a habit that sticks with them. And so that would be good to have more widespread participation in elections.”
On the other hand, the younger population tends to vote less than older Americans. Barton said it’s doubtful that the proposal would lead to a drastic increase in voter turnout.
If 16 and 17-year-olds were given the chance to vote in the next federal election, it’s unsure how much of the decision would really be up to them, according to political science professor John Hibbing.
“These are individuals who probably have not thought about politics a great deal,” he said. “I certainly know when I was 16, I didn’t. If I had had the opportunity to vote (at that age), I’m almost positive I would’ve simply parroted the positions and preferences of my parents.”
Barton suggested that the areas that lowered the voting age were influenced by their partisan makeup. Maryland and California both have a democratic majority, which may explain why they want younger citizens to vote.
“This is the type of proposal that Democrats and liberals are going to be more in favor of potentially because we know that the youth tend to vote and lean democratic,” she said. “So, areas where democrats and liberals are more controlling in those environments may be more supportive of a proposal that could potentially enlarge their voting base.”
As for whether or not such a change would ever come to Nebraska, Barton thinks it’s unlikely, especially considering Nebraska’s age of majority is 19 instead of some other states’ 18.
“It’s kind of an interesting experiment that the local levels are trying, and it’ll be interesting to see if this spreads more widely to more states,” she said. “My inclination would be that Nebraska might be an interesting case, and they might be more resistant than some states, particularly if we’ve taken into account the fact that in Nebraska we have a unique age of majority…I’m a little skeptical as to whether that would happen in Nebraska.”
This is something the likes of George Soros would back wholeheartedly. They will try this first in every liberal segment of the nation, thus DC and San Francisco are floating the idea. 15 and 16 year-olds are not fully developed mentally. They lack judgement and discipline in a whole range of areas. Many don’t show up for class and spend more time thinking about sex than anything else. They are prone to indulge in drinking and drugs more as well. Yet, these people are all for giving them the right to vote. That is akin to putting a 16 year-old in charge of the fate of a nation and is sheer insanity. It is absolutely partisan and is blatant manipulation of voting demographics, just as bringing in hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants and leaving our borders open is. Someone needs to stop this and fast.