Asklemmy

43395 readers

1422 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What do you think the voting age should be? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 21 hours ago by hellabryanstyle@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

113 comments fedilink hide all child comments

About two years ago now, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park writing my initial thoughts on what I didn't know then but would come to know as Youth Rights.

I don't think I'll ever remember why she did, but about halfway through the day Greta Thunberg came to mind, and I looked up the voting age in Sweden. And my blood boiled in a way I've never experienced in my entire life.

16 years old and one of the most famous and recognizable political activists in the world. 16 years old giving a confident, impassioned, admonishing speech to the fucking UN. 16 years old with no legal right to a voice in her country. No voice to vote for the policies she believed in or the people who might enact them.

My writing, already vitriolic to a fault, managed to become even moreso but with the topic abruptly switched to voting. For the first time in my life, I considered where I'd place the voting age if I could do so unilaterally. Not long into considering it I had a thought that I wrote down immediately, a question I've asked well over 100 times at this point with no substantial answer:

When is it reasonable to say to a person, 'If you're not at least this old, then I don't give a fuck what you think'?

And from the moment I had that thought, I have been unable to place the voting age.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 0 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

The idea is that the parent represents the child. We don't trust children to make an informed vote, but we trust parents to make all kinds of choices for their children, including extremely personal choices. The current alternative is to not give children a vote at all. I think letting parents choose the vote for their child is better, and fits pretty well with all the rest that parents currently choose for their child. I also think it's better than simply letting children of all ages vote, since again, they probably won't be able to make an informed vote.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

So, all I have to do is pump my semen into enough women, get them knocked up, and have thirty votes? Awesome! I'll be my own bloc!

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I mean... you can already kinda do that right? Raise your children to have similar values to you and they'll vote like you when they grow up. That happens constantly. There's just an 18 year latency to it. Obviously you lose the vote once they grow up to vote by themselves. I feel like you're making a bit of a strawman out of what I'm saying here. We clearly just disagree and that's okay.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

It's been a pleasant disagreement :)

That's the kind of disagreement that is best.

Edit: also, my apologies. When I saw this earlier, I was on my phone and fat-fingered the down vote. I corrected that. Not that votes matter, but this far down a thread it can seem like disrespect.