NYC-Feature Story

Should 16-Year-Olds Have the Right to Vote?

By Kimberly Clarke

I'm 16, and I'd never really thought much about voting until I heard in the news about Miranda Rosenberg, a teenager in Florida who's trying to get her state to lower the voting age to 16. The idea excited me-I'd love to be able to vote this November for the candidates I trust most, instead of waiting until I'm 18.

Miranda isn't the only one with this goal. In several states and cities around the country, teenagers and politicians are pushing to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote.

Taxation Without Representation

Last year, Miranda, who recently turned 17, wrote a proposed amendment to the Florida state constitution to let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in state elections and is now collecting signatures to get it on the ballot. I asked her how she got the idea.

She told me she had just started a part-time job and had to sign a form allowing taxes to be deducted from her pay. "It bothered me so much . . . even though I'm under the age of 18, I still have to pay my taxes," Miranda said. "I should have the right to vote." She added that in Florida, 16-year-olds are able to drive and can be sentenced for crimes as adults.

Miranda believes that not only do 16- and 17-year-olds deserve the right to vote, but lowering the voting age might help get more young people to participate in elections. In the 2000 presidential election, only 42% of American citizens ages 18 to 24 voted, the lowest percentage of any age group.

Make Voting a Habit

John Vascellanos, a state senator in California who proposed a bill to let teenagers as young as 14 vote in his state, thinks that 18 is the wrong age to start voting. He told me that 18-year-olds are just graduating from high school "and have a lot on their plates," like getting a job, going to college or moving away from home.

"In their minds, they don't have the time to vote when they have so much to do," said Vascellanos. Starting younger, he believes, would get them into the habit of voting.

Together with lowering the voting age, Vascellanos wants to make voting part of the high school curriculum so that students know what to expect and how their votes affect government and society.

I would like to have classes like that. So far I've learned about the different branches of the federal government but nothing about how the New York State and New York City governments work and how elections fit into them.

Adults Don't Trust Us

At first, Vascellanos proposed that each 16- or 17-year-old's vote count as half an adult vote and each 14- and 15-year old's vote a quarter. But to improve the bill's chances of passing, he changed it to a full vote for 16- and 17-year-olds only.

Still, in August, the California State Senate voted the bill down. Vascellanos told me that his opposition believes "teenagers are not responsible and wouldn't take this opportunity seriously."

Miranda, of course, disagrees with that view. "Young people are not as senseless as [adults] think they are." But like Vascellanos, she is having trouble with her campaign. She has only a few thousand of the almost half-million signatures she needs by 2007.

The Struggle Continues

The fight for young people's voting rights isn't over, though. According to Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights Association in Washington, D.C., "over a dozen serious, well-covered proposals to lower the voting age" have popped up around the country within the last year and a half.

"The amount of attention and seriousness this issue has attracted has really skyrocketed," said Koroknay-Palicz. He predicted, "In the next year or so, we'll see the first city or county lower its voting age."