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Lowering the Voting Age
"When I was 16, I realized that I would turn 18 one month after the 2004 election."
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By
Robert Reynolds
“Training Wheels for Citizenship” is the title of a new proposal by California State Senator John Vasconcellos to lower the state’s voting age. It would give teenagers as young as fourteen a fractional vote in state and local elections: sixteen year olds would be granted half an adult vote; fourteen year-olds a quarter vote. All this talk about partial votes is bittersweet news to seventeen year-old Berkeley resident Robert Reynolds. In the past few months, lowering the voting age has become something of a personal crusade for him. You might have heard his commentary on our show a few weeks ago, but since then, a lot has changed. We asked him to take a take a tape recorder to document his political adventures.
ROBERT
When I was 16, I realized that I would turn 18 one month after the 2004 election. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t be eligible to vote. I felt cheated. So I came up with the idea to lower the voting age, and boy did I feel brilliant.
When I asked my dad about it, it was easy to get his support.
DAD (on tape)
I think it’s a good idea. I guess I think that 18 year olds and older have done such a bad job there’s no way that you guys could do it any worse than we have.
ROBERT
I think we could do it better. Researching the issue online, I found out that tons of organizations have been working on lowering the voting age for years. I guess I wasn’t so brilliant after all. But it was great to find so many reasons why teens should get the vote.
For starters, we pay taxes, yet have no say in how those taxes are spent. And, we can be punished like adults in courtrooms, but don’t get any of the legal benefits adults do.
All excited, I started a small organization at my school and named it the Progressive Club, because, at the time, I thought we would make progress.
For the first month or so, nobody came to my weekly meetings except for my friend, Alex. They didn’t even come after we posted dozens of flyers around school, clearly stating that free snacks would be provided. I was shocked. Now, we have about eight people in the club, and sometimes, only four people show up. So morale is up and down for people like Zach Hobesh when he sizes up the club’s success.
ZACH (on tape)
I don’t think it’s very effective at all.
(Robert) Why?
(Zach) Because we’re not getting anything done.
(Robert) What do you suggest us to do in order to get stuff done?
(Zach) More members, and get more people.
(Robert) What should we do when we get more people?
(Zach) I don’t know. I don’t really think the club is going anywhere.
ROBERT
To get through those depressing times, I still try to have fun working on this issue. For example, I love to argue and never miss a chance to get into a debate with someone over something. So now I get into heated arguments over the voting age with random people at my high school like Emily Greenwell. She thinks 16 year olds shouldn’t get to vote.
EMILY (on tape)
Because they’re misinformed. Most 16 yr olds do not know what’s going on in politics, like that’s just a fact. We’re not denying 16 year olds the right to vote, we’re just saying you have to reach a certain age to be able to vote. The majority decided that.
(Robert) But the majority does not include youth.
(Emily) Why don’t we just make it 4? When you’re old enough to read, you’re old enough to vote.
ROBERT
Okay – that’s a pretty weird argument. Out of all the arguments I’ve heard so far, it’s the most bizarre.
That is part of the reason I love arguing with people about it so much because of all the funny things that they say. Sometimes when I debate with people and they have run out of arguments, they ask me why I am working on lowering the voting age if it won’t even effect me, because I’ll be 18 before this passes anyway.
When they say that, it makes me wonder when, if ever, the voting age will be changed. So I talked to my friend Alex about it.
ALEX (on tape)
(Robert) Do you believe we will see a change in the voting age?
(Alex) Eventually. Yeah.
(Robert) How long do you think it will take?
(Alex) It could take a year or two years, or 50 years, I don’t know.
ROBERT
But Alex is committed. With the help of friends like him, the Progressive Club meetings are starting to fill up with enthusiastic progressives, out to make a difference, in the voting age that is.
A week before Super Tuesday, our club decided to take action. So early in the morning of the primary, while most of our peers were still asleep, we picketed outside the polls at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Our group was a pretty unusual bunch. 6 club members, my dad, 3 reporters, and a British guy named Alex.
During the protest, I walked into the polls and asked for a ballot. I was expecting to be asked for my identification, since I could be 18. They don’t know. But the person behind the table said I couldn’t have a ballot. Well, sheesh, how young do I look?
If they did let me in, I’d place my vote on the only candidate who supports lowering the voting age – Dennis Kucinich.
KUCINICH (on tape)
Today, 16 year olds have the ability to make informed decisions on matters as important as electing the president of the United States. And I think they absolutely should have the right to vote.
ROBERT
While I’m stoked that a Presidential Candidate supports my idea, it doesn’t help if Kucinich is barely getting any votes. Now with this new statewide proposal to lower to voting age in California to 14, I’ve got to rethink my strategy. I’m glad people are starting to take this issue seriously, and I’ll help the campaign. But I don’t really want to have a half a vote. Would you? I mean I thought we did away with discriminatory math with the 14th amendment back in 1868.
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