If you’re cool with sending an 18 year old to battle, you should be cool with letting them vote
Also can we please just let them have a beer, too?
If I’m going to be forced to die in a desert for some rich dude profit margin I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want
No no, if we let them vote they might vote for people who want to not send 18 year olds to war
Service guarantees citizenship.
**I would like to know more. **
10 is old enough to be a mom.
16 is old enough to fall into a meat vat.
18 is old enough to give them a rifle.
Old enough to raise a whole ass human, slaughter edible living things, slaughter edible flying living things… but not old enough to decide what changes affect your community.
Wow.
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I think one is hunting and the other is working in a slaughterhouse
18 is old enough to decide to owe 200k on an education
18 is old enough to give them a rifle.
Actually 17 with parental consent.
12 is old enough to enter the workforce without a permit or parental consent.
I did hunter safety when I was 12 in Wisconsin.
What else is there to do in Wisconsin though? Eat cheese? Tip over the cows? Disappear on lake Michigan or Superior?
I actually don’t think most of our society is qualified to vote.
Voter rights should be determined by whether or not you know anything about what you’re voting for, not based on your age. People should have to pass a test every year.
The problem with this line of thinking is who would set the standard for the test? The current controlling power would skew things so only their supporters are now qualified to vote. In order to have a free and fair election every citizen needs the right to vote, otherwise we might as well just go back to the days that only white male landowners get to vote.
Man, the GOP just loves making the core tenet of Democracy inaccessible to anyone and everyone who isn’t rich and white.
and OLD
Let’s be honest: if youth these days were inclined toward the right, Republican contenders would be fighting to ‘defend’ youths’ right to vote from non-existent left-wing ‘threats’.
Shit, they’d be fighting to lower it to 16.
I wish someone would propose limiting voting to people who’ve passed a citizenship test.
I guarantee these yokel conservatives would think it’s a great idea to further marginalize people but I guarantee most of their electorate couldn’t pass a citizenship test lol
I’d rather go the other way and restrict voting to folks under 70. At least 18 year olds are going to have to live with the consequences.
Disagree. I understand where you’re coming from but it’s short sighted to write off everyone over 70.
I understand where you’re coming from
Not if you thought I was in any way serious.
This demographic I’m not popular with shouldn’t be allowed to vote
Sounds like the terrorist GOP
The party of forced birth for child rape victims says what?
Let’s call this what it is: a call to repeal the 26th amendment
Misleading headline. What it should say is:
GOP Contender Vivek Ramaswamy Thinks Voting is A Privilege to be Earned
And that is far, far scarier.
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Funny, the older I get the more progressive I get. Same for most of the people I know (I’m a millennial). It used to be you got more conservative as you got older but i think the consensus now is you get more conservative the richer you get and well, my generation isn’t getting richer. I think we all just realize how easy it would be to pay the bill if we would just tax the rich.
Not defending the other douche but im willing to bet you’d probably be surprised at how expensive it is to live in European countries with all of those things you’re hoping for. Like 60p of your paycheck goes to taxes and services. I think most folks who want those things Carte Blanche haven’t done the math
That said, I think not having to worry about being bankrupted over a medical diagnosis would be worth it.
Source - am a dual citizen and have spent years living in Europe and USA
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You have that backwards. What taxes aren’t we collecting that could be going to everyone? Why should some 40K a year guy have to pay 10% of his income as taxes and someone like Bezos doesn’t?
The US used to have a 69% tax rate for the ultra wealthy before Regan took office. We should bring that back.
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What’s wrong with “from everyone according to their ability, and to everyone according to their need?”
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the ‘freebies and handouts’ are a miniscule portion of government revenue and expenses.
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Yeah, while I don’t want to restrict anyone’s voting, any logic against younger people voting is not nearly as strong as logic against older people voting. It’s not just that they won’t be a part of the world for as long (that said, it’s entirely possible a 70 year old gets another 2 decades, so I don’t think that’s necessarily compelling reasoning). Mental decline is also an issue and arguably more relevant.
The alt right doesn’t like young voters because they claim they’re too immature. But senility is very similar on the opposite end of the spectrum. Senile voters can be simply disconnected from reality and thus unable to make good choices.
That said, you can’t just draw an age limit and expect that to cover senility, since one person can be 65 and senile while another is 90 and of sound mind. So I don’t think we should be restricting voting on either side of the age range (though we should let people as young as 16 vote – we already trust them to do dangerous things like drive).
Yeah, well I feel 37 is too young to run for president. Maybe he should pause his campaign.
Anyone over the age of retirement shouldn’t be able to run for any publ office.
The GOP is too corrupt to breathe our air.
I saw that interview where said democrats are genetically different than republicans, so fuck him.
Wait, what?
Can you link?
Maybe a brown guy in a party of racists shouldn’t be bringing up genetics. Sounds like the sort of thing they’d use against him.
Can go die in a war at 18, but can’t buy a gun until you’re 21
Can’t drink beer until you’re 21, but can vote in general elections at 18
We need to just pick one and go with it, either 18 or 21
I was in a US history class in high school when the teacher said that the drinking age used to be 18, and the voting age used to be 21, but they switched places. He then asked “Why?” And started calling on random students.
When I got picked, my answer was “Fewer drunk voters?”
But more uneducated voters
Education isn’t a requirement to vote, so doesn’t make sense to play a part in age restricting voting. A now-30 year old who dropped out of high school at a young age is allowed to vote.
Wasn’t there this whole defining thing for America? Something about taxation without representation, right? So the 18 year olds have to pay taxes on the wages they earn by working and therefore should be able to vote. The retired, however…
The idea that the right to vote is tied to your tax contributions is very flawed.
Paying taxes without the right to vote is absolutely ridiculous (so either link the right to vote to the age you’re allowed to work, or tax exempt any work done under the voting age), but the inverse is ridiculous as well. People, above the voting age, that don’t pay any taxes for whatever reason, should not have their voting rights stripped. This reasoning gets dangerously close to a plural voting system, where you get multiple votes if you’re rich enough.
If you want to disenfranchise retired people, use some other reasoning (like decline in cognitive abilities), not because they are no longer actively paying taxes.
Note that I am not in favour of disenfranchising anyone. Keep the lower limit for voting age, or even reduce it, and no upper limit. Also make voting as accessible as possible.
Alas, I’ll have to learn to indicate the right level of cynicism more explicitly on here.
As cynical but slightly more in earnest: if voting rights were only given to those who can prove basic reasoning abilities, it might actually make a difference. Since there is no reliable way to prevent authorities from abusing such a criterium, I see no other option than to have no restrictions on any generic criterium. Perhapa a voting obligation would be more effective.
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Students - all non-wage-earners - shouldn’t be able to vote by your logic?
Plenty of high schoolers and college students have jobs. Many before the age of 18.
Students - all non-wage-earners - shouldn’t be able to vote by your logic?
I don’t know how you could possibly derive that conclusion from what they said, unless you lack a very basic understanding of how to interpret logical statements.
