Should the voting age be 16?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should the voting age be 16?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, the voting age is fine as it is
Argument1 of 3›: Responsibilities are really starting

Life is beginning to happen, and this is the perfect age for the concept of civic duty to make an appearance.

The argument

The argument is about timing rather than about capability in the abstract. At eighteen, the concept of adulthood is starting to be realised: most young adults are striving towards college, employment, or a family. Those are the first commitments a person enters that are theirs rather than their parents', and each requires planning beyond the immediate — an application, a wage, a household to help run. That change in the character of a young person's decisions is what the argument takes as the relevant threshold. Eighteen is therefore the perfect time to introduce the idea of voting, and it makes a great first step into actively becoming a member of society. The reasoning is developmental rather than restrictive: the vote arrives alongside the other things that mark entry into public life, at the point when a person begins to hold a stake in the arrangements voting decides. Introduced earlier, it would be the single adult act in an otherwise unchanged life. Voting puts a certain amount of responsibility on one's shoulders, and this is where the comparison with sixteen becomes decisive. At eighteen, the idea of responsibilities has finally begun to sink in. Choices matter more, because their consequences are increasingly borne by the person making them rather than absorbed by a household or a school. Someone who has begun to feel that connection has the raw material from which to understand what voting is. The weight and consequences of voting may actually make sense to an eighteen-year old, while they wouldn't to a younger teenager — not because a sixteen-year-old lacks intelligence or interest, but because the experience that gives the act its meaning has not yet arrived. On that reasoning the voting age is fine as it is.

Premises

[P1]Voting is a significant civic responsibility whose weight and consequences must be understood by those who exercise it. [P2] At eighteen, young adults are entering real adult responsibilities like work, college, and family, and can grasp the weight of consequential choices in ways younger teenagers cannot. [C] Therefore, the voting age should remain at eighteen rather than be lowered to sixteen.

Counter-arguments

Although adult responsibilities should be beginning at this age, many young adults neglect these responsibilities. Look at college parties and social media. Young adults do not yet fully understand the weight of their decisions.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Many 18-year-olds do not comprehend responsibility. [Rejecting P2] Voting is a right, not a responsibility.