Posted on 06/30/2016 9:38:00 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Sixteen years. That’s how much longer the average British voter aged 65 and older will live, according to one analysis, which means that’s how long they’ll have to live with the outcome of last week’s Brexit referendum. Since older voters are estimated to have turned out in huge numbers — and voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union — Britain’s graying generation is partly responsible for the biggest drop in the pound in decades, for the uncertainty in lives of millions of EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU, and for bringing to power a group of conservative politicians who trafficked in racist rhetoric and outright lies to win.
There’s a decent argument to be made for denying suffrage to anyone old enough to collect Social Security.
So why do we even let old people vote? After all, there are minimum voting ages — 16- and 17-year-olds fought for the chance to vote in the EU referendum and were denied. Had that 1.46-million-member voting bloc been allowed to contribute, it would likely have swung the vote for “Remain” — 82 percent of them said they’d have voted to stay in the EU. When Scotland voted on its independence in 2014, 16- and 17-year-olds were given a vote, under the logic that it was their future being irrevocably altered. There’s a decent argument to be made for denying suffrage to anyone old enough to collect Social Security. Most are no longer working or raising children. Why should they create the future when they won’t be around to deal with the consequences?
Pragmatic, the idea is not. It’s hard to imagine any legislator introducing such a bill (we hear you, AARP!), or, for that matter, a court diluting or limiting the power of an older-person bloc. For starters, doing so would blatantly violate the U.S. Constitution, points out voting rights expert Nathan Persily: The 26th Amendment declares that voting cannot be “denied or abridged” on account of age, so long as the voter is 18 or older. And apart from that, such a proposal is mean and disrespectful; not all older people are shortsighted (we love you, Mom and Dad!). It also sounds a bit like millennial grousing. Instead of trying to dilute the power of an older voting bloc, why can’t young people turn out in greater numbers? Get thee to the polls, young people!
Outlandish though the idea of restricting the suffrage of elders is, a reasonable argument does exist that “there is bias against the youth vote in the system as currently constituted,” says Persily. Younger people tend to be more transient than older ones. Not necessarily in a bad way, mind you. Some are attending college and working summer jobs. Others are moving from job to job, or house to house, or partner to partner, in an effort to get settled and put down roots. Mobility, it turns out, is an important predictor of voter registration, and because young people move more, fewer are registered. Indeed, sometimes localities try to dilute the influence of college students by scheduling elections in the summer.
So why not make voting registration easier? In most countries, Persily says, voter registration is a state responsibility and the default status of citizens is “registered.” Most jurisdictions in the U.S., on the other hand, put the burden on its citizens to register. In 2012, the Pew Charitable Trusts estimated that 51 million eligible voters were not registered, a whopping 24 percent of the eligible population. A disproportionate number of those were young people.
Automatic voter registration is changing this fact — but in the meantime, consider this: Americans don’t get to vote in Mexican elections, and Canadians don’t get a say in who leads France, or whether France remains in the EU, or whether Paris’ arrondissements should be redistricted. The future is a country, and if you’re not going to be there, don’t expect to get to govern it.
Logan’s Run
Don’t let short people vote.
Don’t let short people vote, either.
Don’t let anyone vote. We can’t be discriminatory.
“So why not make voting registration easier? “
Why? The “old folks” were smart enough to figure out how to register.
I guess the writer is saying that the young folks are too stupid to figure it out.
.
Please Fiona, cut to the chase — on decisions to cut Welfare, just let people on Welfare vote. On decisions on Affirmative Action, just let minorities vote. On immigration and Middle East policy decisions, just let Muslims vote. In fact, just do away with voting and let a Liberal King or Queen rule the country.
Don’t let socialists, liberals and globalists vote.
IMO, anyone who collects a federal paycheck should not vote at the federal level. THey are compromised.
Good work on that turn out.
Raise the voting age to 35 minimum where by then, people have families and make more pragmatic decisions based on experience and social success.
And Fiona, once you get to old to contribute, send you to a country where they know what to do with useless people.
Don’t let Liberal people vote.
Voter registration is very easy. It’s people that are too lazy and stupid to do it. These are the same idiots who know where all the free Wi-Fi is and manage to comment on Facebook every hour.
How many graduates of the public school system can tell you how a socialist economic system functions? How many can write the English language let alone pass a simple civics test?
Thomas Jefferson warned that an uninformed electorate would destroy the freedoms of a republic: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, ...it expects what never was and never will be."
Actually we should raise the voting age back up to 21 for anyone who is not a member of the military - unless of course they’re still on their parents’ health care plan, in which case it should be when they’re 26.
However, if you are receiving a government mandated retirement that was set up for you to pay into while you were working then that doesn't count.
Hey here in the US I'd settle for stopping dead people from voting.
But typical leftist: let's find a minority that we can dump on and cut them out. They are all for divide and conquer.
When America was saner. One needed to OWN land to vote and women could not.
Don’t let young people vote. They lack the wisdom and experience, on the whole. If you’ve got to be 21 to be considered to have the wisdom to buy or not buy alcohol or tobacco, why why should you be allowed to vote?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.