16 Candles and a Ballot? Essay
Throughout the history of America, there have been many changes in the voting rights of the people. As “equal rights of all men” changed from the equal rights of rich white men, to all white men, to men and women the ballot range has gotten larger and larger. It represents all the people of the United States now. Now, the argument is about age. Should the voting age be lowered to younger teenagers who claim they are affected by laws that are pass? The voting age should not be changed because teenagers are not mentally or physically capable to take the right responsibility that voting requires.Voting in itself is a big responsibility. Teenagers just aren’t ready to take it on. Physically they aren’t able to make these big decisions.
A child’s frontal lobes don’t fully develop until they are in there twenties. For females, they aren’t developed until about twenty-one and for males, the frontal lobe isn’t developed until they are about twenty-five. The frontal lobe is what gives a person the ability to determine what is wrong and what is right.
It helps people make decisions and helps recognize future consequences resulting from current actions.Basically it’s what makes a person human. At the age of sixteen, the frontal lobe is not mature enough to help make the correct decision in a vote that could be fundamental for the country. Young children are easily swayed into making decisions that they would not make otherwise. If sixteen-year-olds were given voting rights, then they could be pressured into making the ‘right choice’, which wouldn’t be their choice at all.
It could be by their friends, or by their teachers or even their parents.This peer pressure would result in biased votes that wouldn’t represent the country right. As a result, the people in Washington wouldn’t be the right ones to represent the country for the country.
Lastly, how many sixteen year olds would actually vote? Currently the voting age is eighteen and the average age that actually votes is sixty-five. The highest percent of young voters was for the 2008 elections and that was only half. So what’s to say that changing the voting age will change that?It won’t. The voting age is fine how it is. Eighteen is when children become legal adults and that’s when they’ll become legal voters as well.
Overall, children want to be heard. Right now the economy is bad and they want a say in what gets cut. That is understandable, but that doesn’t mean that are ready for such a responsibility as voting. Voting – like many other things – is something that they’ll have to wait for. Then they will be able to try to change the things they want to change.
