The Anal Philosopher thinks that Young People Should Not Be Allowed to Vote:
I'm glad that only one of every three college-age people votes. People this age don't have enough knowledge or experience to participate in the electoral process. In fact, I'll go further and say that the voting age should be thirty. By this time, a person has finished his or her formal education (including graduate or professional school) and has entered the workforce. By thirty, most people have begun families and become homeowners (or at least renters). This gives them a stake in the community. That should be a prerequisite for taking part in the political process.
This seems reasonable on the face of it. Certainly I value my right to vote quite a bit more now at 28 than I did at 18. I might be willing to tentatively agree with this proposition, and even to vote against my own right to vote (until my 30th birthday). But I wonder about a few things.
Slippery Slope Why 30? If we agree to 30, nine years later will there be an initiative to raise the voting age to 40? If I vote to disfranchise myself now, what protection do I have that I'm not being disfranchised forever?
Military Service The original justification for lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, I seem to recall, was that the draft age was 18. It seemed unfair for 18-year-olds to be drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam but to have no say in politics: in short, to be sent to fight a war they could not choose to end. The draft is not active now, but it can be reinstated at need. Is there not a risk that raising the voting age to 30 would create more Vietnam-type situations, where the young people are sent off to fight the old peoples' wars? (1)
Immigration Jackson's summary of his argument is "This gives them a stake in the community. That should be a prerequisite for taking part in the political process." But as proposed, a voting age of 30 would not discriminate against recent-immigrant citizens. Are you telling me that some 30-year-old who just got naturalized and has maybe been in the country five years (2) has a bigger stake in the community than I do at age 28, having lived here since birth? Please bite me.
My parents are citizens-by-choice -- they immigrated from then-Czechoslovakia in 1968 -- so I am aware that immigrants often value what native-born citizens take for granted, but it seems reasonable to me that if I am required to wait 12 years of my adult life before I am allowed to vote, so should every citizen. We could do that by lengthening the permanent resident period or merely denying the franchise to new citizens until they've lived here for 12 years. I don't particularly care which. (3)
Endnotes:
(1) One possible remedy would be to immediately extend the franchise to soldiers on active duty, or to give soldiers "accelerated aging" -- e.g., two years towards voting for every one year served. But this starts to sound like a Heinlein novel.
(2) I am not sure of the actual current minimum, as I am having difficulty with the PDF's from the INS (now weirdly called "US Citizenship and Immigration Services")
(3) Perhaps we could have a sliding scale which takes into account the level of democracy and consensual government of the source country: 12 years delay for a totalitarian dictatorship, seven years for a European PR system (Italy, say), five years for a British-style parliamentary democracy (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). Thirty would remain the minimum age, of course.