Originally published November 23 2015
Democrats desperately trying to lower voting age to 16 to include young, inexperienced minds that are easily influenced
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Democrats in and around the nation's capital city are looking for new ways to solidify and legitimize their hold on power, with three council members proposing to lower the federal voting age from 18 to 16.
According to Washington, DC's Fox 5 News, the proposal was introduced by chief author Charles Allen, the council member from Ward 6. He claims his bill, the "Youth Vote Amendment Act of 2015," is constitutional because the 26th Amendment doesn't forbid younger Americans from voting, and that the nation's guiding legal document only ensures that those 18 or older have the right to vote.
The actual language of the amendment, ratified in 1971, reads:
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
So in other words, the Amendment does not, in fact, explicitly prohibit U.S. citizens under 18 years of age from voting, instead only ensuring that U.S. citizens who are 18 or older are allowed to vote.
Legal challenges?
"Advocates hope the idea would encourage change in civic involvement in the District, where just 38 percent of registered voters turned out for the city's last mayoral election," Fox 5 reported. "If the legislation passes, D.C. wouldn't be the first to lower the voting age. In Tacoma Park, Md., the minimum age to vote in municipal elections is 16."
However, the voting age that was lowered in Tacoma Park is for city elections, which is entirely different from national elections.
According to History.com, prior to the passage of the 26th Amendment, there was no federal voting age; states set voting ages, and that age, most generally, was 21. But the tumult of the 20th century, in which over 25,000 American conscripts under the age of 21 were sent to die in Vietnam, led to much national discussion about lowering voting ages:
The long debate over lowering the voting age in America from 21 to 18 began during World War II and intensified during the Vietnam War, when young men denied the right to vote were being conscripted to fight for their country. In the 1970 case Oregon v. Mitchell, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the right to regulate the minimum age in federal elections, but not at the state and local level. Amid increasing support for a Constitutional amendment, Congress passed the 26th Amendment in March 1971; the states promptly ratified it, and President Richard M. Nixon signed it into law that July.
Young people favor Democrats
Now, since everything liberals do is political, why are those who govern D.C. interested in this issue? Because, as History.com further notes, young voters (in the 18–24 age range) were the only demographic group to show a statistically significant increase in turnout in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
There's more. According to a Kennedy School of Government study at Harvard University, younger Americans who have less experience with politics and the real world favor Democrats, though in recent elections, actual voters in the 18–29 age group favored Republicans by an advantage of 4 percentage points.
Now, it seems, Democrats' solution to this trend is to incorporate a greater number of even younger and more naive voters who can be easily influenced into voting for the party of "compassion" and "free" stuff. As McClatchy Papers reported in April:
The Democratic Party may be losing its overwhelming hold on the nation's youngest voters – suggesting trouble holding the White House.
Millennial voters, ages 18-29, are not as decidedly Democratic as when Barack Obama was on the presidential ticket, according to a new poll by the Institute on Politics at Harvard University.
Today, they say they'd vote for a Democrat in 2016 by 55-40 percent over a Republican.
That's down sharply from the 66-32 percent support they gave Obama against Republican John McCain in 2008. It's also down from the 60-37 percent support they gave Obama in 2012 against Republican Mitt Romney.
Is it beginning to make sense now why liberals want younger people to have the right to vote?
Sources:
Fox5dc.com
History.com
Fusion.net
IOP.Harvard.edu
McClatchyDC.com
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