208
Missouri teens want to lower the voting age to 16 in local and school elections
(news.stlpublicradio.org)
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
208 points (100.0% liked)
Politics
10180 readers
95 users here now
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
i think it makes sense for voting age to be 16 at least in some cases; internationally it's not that weird of a policy. actually i think a big problem would just be the logistics of carrying it out: since the US doesn't inherently have distinct election dates for municipal, local, state, and federal elections, it's possible for all of them to be on the same ballot (meaning you could be eligible to vote in some races but not others and you'd be potentially committing a crime if you did).
DC and cities in three states allow noncitizen to vote in local elections, so clearly there's a way to get it done. I suspect it's as Nougat suggests, a separate ballot for non-citizens and/or under-18 voters.
So there's two ballots instead of one. They already give you the ballot for the specific district you're in when you go to vote now. Problem solved.
that's a solution--but i'm guessing that'd singlehandedly double the additional overhead and complexity for printing and sending out ballots, on top of what those already have to account for.
My town has six districts for the village board but we only have one polling place for the whole town (it's a small town) additionally you can vote early at the county office.
They simply print your ballot when you give them your name at the polling place. You fill in the bubbles and then put it into the ballot machine. It counts it electronically, but it drops down into a locked cabinet.
I'm assuming it's the same procedure for everyone in my county for all the different voting/government body districts people are in.
@Nougat @Cube6392 @alyaza that wouldn't achieve the goal of locking up as many untermenschen as possible. Remember the time a black person asked the government if she could vote and they said yes, then she got a long prison sentence for illegally voting?
Yeah I feel like I sound more negative about this than I am. I think generally speaking we should be raising the age of consent (this is the most critical change, I'm not okay with it being 14 in places), raising the age you're allowed to start hiring at (seriously what the fuck Arkansas), prooobably leaving the driving age where it is though I've heard strong arguments 16 is the worst age for motor control, lowering the voting age, and raising the age you can buy lotto tickets and cigarettes at. In fact abolish the lottory. Tax the rich instead