The Right to Vote
By Deb Lewis
Twelve years ago I met
someone who has continued to force me to reevaluate the way our government and
society view children. He’s a capable American
citizen, informed, intelligent and interested in the process of
government. He’s my 12-year-old son, and
although he knows more about the process and the candidates than many adults,
he won’t have the right to vote for six more years.
Lawmakers have gone to a lot
of hard work and expense to make the process of voting fair and polling places
accessible to everyone. Yet there are
millions of young Americans – some as informed as my son – who are denied participation
in the process which will govern them.
When my son was very young,
I watched his reasoning process grow and change, and my understanding of human
learning and ability evolved. He was
talking, understanding people and being understood without one English lesson. He was walking without ever studying anatomy
or gross motor skills development. He
surprised me almost everyday until my narrow expectations of children crumbled
and I came to realize that every child is born suited to a life as a human. Yet, our society puts children into a small,
not-quite-ready-to-be-a-person box and tries to hold them there.
We have in place a number of
age-based laws that define when young people are ready for certain rights and
aspects of life. These laws offer no
protection to young people that could not be provided by means other than
age-based laws. Instead of considering
natural and personal abilities or limitations as factors that would determine
an individual’s readiness for ever increasing experiences and responsibilities, we set the arbitrary criteria of age.
In Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of
Children (Ballantine Books, 1974) John Holt
wrote: “I urge that the law grant and guarantee to the young the freedom that
it now grants to adults to make certain kinds of choices, do certain kinds of
things, and accept certain kinds of responsibilities. This means in turn that the law will take
action against anyone who interferes
with young people’s rights to do such things.
Thus when the law guarantees me the right to vote, it is not saying I
must vote, it is not giving me a vote. It only
says that if I choose to vote it will act against anyone who tries to prevent
me. In granting me rights the law does
not say what I must or shall do. It
simply says that it will not allow other people to prevent me from doing these
things.”
Thirty years later, our
government still says we are unqualified to vote the day before our 18th
birthday, but magically qualified the day after. While this is only one of many ways young
people are discriminated against, it might be the most serious. For while the government is making laws
affecting young people, those young people are not, in turn, capable of
affecting government.
One of the arguments against
eliminating voting age restrictions is that it would be unfair for mere
children to make decisions that would affect the lives of adults. It’s a hypocritical argument when one
considers all the decisions made by adults that affect the lives of young
people. These include curfew laws;
driving age restrictions; restrictions about purchase of certain types of
music, magazines, video games and movies; and compulsory school
attendance. Even worse are laws allowing
corporal punishment; there is no other member of our society who can be
physically assaulted without any means of legal recourse. Equality before the law, it seems, is not
meant for all Americans.
While children are
considered too young to have a valid political opinion, too young to be allowed
to select their own music, too young to attempt to pass a driving test, they
are, in many states, old enough to be tried as adults if they commit a crime.
Whatever arguments can be
made today to deny young people the right to vote have been made before in
opposition to women voting, to minority civil rights and to lowering the voting
age to 18. In the end I think it comes
down to fear. Thinking about giving
power to those who’ve deliberately been made powerless makes people nervous. This is not a new fear. In 1776 John Adams said this: “It is dangerous to open so fruitful a source
of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the
qualifications of voters; there will be no end of it. New claims will arise: women will demand a
vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and
every man who has not a farthing will demand an equal voice with any other in
all acts of state.”
Women do have the right to
vote today. Held down for more than a
hundred years we are participating in the process and our nation survived the
controversy