Younger Every Year: New Pushes to Lower Voting Age
[Image courtesy of olecommunity]
The concept of “voting age” continues to change as communities across the nation consider – and adopt new policies lowering the age threshhold for casting a ballot.
The big headlines are from Takoma Park, MD (just outside Washington DC) where last week the City Council granted 16- and 17-year olds the right to vote in city elections. From the Washington Post:
When Takoma Park’s next Election Day arrives in November, the lines of voters ready to cast their ballots for the City Council will include a new set of voters making history.
During its Monday meeting, the Takoma Park City Council passed a series of city charter amendments regarding its voting and election laws, including one allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in city elections …
With Monday’s vote, Takoma Park became the first city in the United States to lower its voting age — which was previously 18 — to 16.
The voting age amendment brought out young residents to an April 8 public hearing where they cited their readiness and eagerness to participate in the city’s elections.
Other residents argued, however, that the teenagers lacked the maturity and experience to handle the responsibility and that they would be easily influenced by their parents.
Policy questions aside, the lowering of voting age brings with it new challenges for election officials. I recently discussed the challenge of segregating voters by ballot in the context of the New York City proposal to enfranchise legal non-citizen residents; as in New York City, Takoma Park’s youth voters would not be eligible to vote in state or federal contests. The other question that no one (to my knowledge) has addressed is whether young Takoma Park voters will automatically “graduate” to full voterhood upon reaching legal age or if they will need to re-register.
If the process is automatic, it will resemble the process of pre-registering young voters that is already in place in some communities. The smoothness of that procedure varies by jurisdiction depending on the capacity of the local election office to identify voters as pre-eleigible but not fully eligible.
If nothing else, the change in Takoma Park – which comes as more and more jurisdictions are looking to make 17-year olds eligible in primaries when they will reach 18 before the general election – will highlight for the field the importance of obtaining and managing accurate birthdate data in voter rolls.
I know in my polling place, I feel like the voters get younger every year … but very soon that may be the result of something other than my advancing age!