“Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” Youth activists championed this slogan during peak wartime drafts in American history. 18 to 20-year-old men lost their lives to wars, fighting for a country and government they had no representation in.
In 1971, that came to an end, as the 26th Amendment was ratified and the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.
Today, in 2023, I’m an 18-year-old-woman. I’m enrolled in a 4-year university and I pay taxes. An endless amount of ballot measures pertain to my life, and I can have a say in those measures through voting. This is the inherent right to democracy that this country was founded on, yet so many U.S. citizens were denied this basic freedom in our tumultuous history.
I’ll be fully transparent and say I’ve had conflicting thoughts about voting in the past. Growing up under divisive partisanship, presidential elections always read to me like “vote for the better of two bad people.”
It wasn’t until an amendment was proposed to Kansas’ constitution, which would have eliminated the right to an abortion, that my perspective changed. I’d spent the entire summer of 2022 horrified. With the local election seemingly on the entire city’s radar, “vote no” and “vote yes” signs dueled throughout every Wichita neighborhood. I waited in anticipation.
On Aug. 2, 2022, Kansas voters overwhelmingly voted against the “Value Them Both” amendment, keeping abortion protected in our state. I saw the power of the ballot system.
With anti-LGBTQ+, and specifically anti-trans, ideology at the forefront of so many right-wing campaigns, voting doesn’t feel like a choice to me anymore. There are lives to protect.
Republican Party presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy argues that the voting age should be raised to 25, with exceptions for younger folk who fulfill six months minimum of military service or as a first responder or pass a citizenship test, according to the Associated Press.
The AP article also notes that Ramaswamy thinks the debate generated by his proposal will itself catalyze a long-overdue conversation about what it means to be a citizen and how to foster civic pride in the next generation.
I personally feel that when you start gatekeeping the right to vote, you’re stifling American citizens from engaging in the democratic process and developing their “civic pride.”
With young males still being required by Federal Law to register with the Selective Service System to this day and heightened geopolitical tensions flooding the news, we’d be foolish to disregard our votes as an important playing piece.
I’ll echo “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” as activists did decades ago. If 18 year olds are deemed cognizant enough to die fighting for the United States or to be fully punished by our carceral system, we deserve representation in the government.
