The issue of suffrage has been dividing the nation since the 1950s. Voting is the most political power that a normal American citizen can hold and the debate over who exactly gets to have it continues to this day. Modern issues like the Vote16 movement (working to lower the minimum voting age) are especially polarizing with older adults and that’s understandable. As a demographic, younger teens’ opinions differ drastically from those of 18- and 19-year-olds, let alone 80- and 90-year-olds. Even more simply, change is scary on a psychological level. That’s why, even putting aside politics, there will always be resistance to decisions that would shake up the status quo.
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However, there’s something more than Psych 101 behind this. Ironically, many adults demonstrate a clear misunderstanding about what the right to vote even is and who gets to have it. There’s a reason there’s not a test to see if you’re eligible to vote. In fact, that reason is crucial to the rights and freedoms Americans enjoy today.
Evidently, many people have an opinion vastly different from Vote16 advocates. “Not only,” one anonymous commenter on a recent article argued, “should the voting age stay right where it is, but yu [sic] should have to take a test before you can vote.” (This comment has since been removed.)
The only two widespread examples of tests required before a right is granted are federal citizenship exams and state driver’s tests. These are both to preserve the safety of citizens – to regulate immigration and keep unsafe drivers off the streets. The rights to citizenship and driving, respectively, are not granted by the Constitution but by laws created later which outline how they will be granted.
Voting, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. The purpose of our democracy is to allow the opinions of the people to steer the course of America as a nation. “The people” in this case means all citizens, regardless of gender, race, language and literacy. Whether 16-year-olds are voting or not, putting a test in place for voters is dangerous and discriminatory.
Putting a test in place as a prerequisite for voting would simply lower voter turnout and present a hard language barrier to American citizens who only speak English as a second language, if at all. Between 1850 and 1960, many southern states required potential voters to take a literacy test. This test prevented most African-American voters from voting. While the Supreme Court allowed these tests in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 effectively banned them across the United States.
Democracy is a beautiful thing, and one of the most perfect parts is that responsibility falls to the individual. No amount of testing can eliminate the people who just don’t care. However, on the flip side, a majority of the nation does care. As long as most voters are at least somewhat informed, which it’s hard not to be in the digital age, democracy is a self-correcting machine. Attempting to regulate it with a discriminatory test will destroy that delicate equilibrium.
Whether or not 16-year-olds will get the vote in the United States remains to be seen, but rest assured it will become a mainstream issue leading up to the next election. In the meantime, stay informed. Our democracy will be all the better for it.
Featured Image Via Wikipedia
