Insufferable Suffrage; Sixteen-year-olds absolutely should not vote

There is every reason to want teens, uninterested in voting or unprepared to vote, to perform an important civic duty by staying home rather than imposing their ignorance on the rest of us. And if you argue that many adult voters are similarly infantile and ignorant, I say: You’re right. Let’s not create any more. David Harsayi

National Review  "There’s an insidious movement afoot to lower the voting age to 16. By promising suffrage to the most easily manipulated and emotionally unstable voters in America, Democrats in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has endorsed the scheme, are pushing to make the electorate quite literally less mature.

"Americans get their hackles up when you point out that teenagers are probably the most insufferable group in the nation. Well, second-most insufferable. As a group, teens, of course, aren’t immoral or irredeemably broken, like most politicians, just unfinished and slightly unbalanced — awkwardly oscillating between incomprehensible immaturity and unearned confidence, and between impulsiveness and irrational anxiety. Incentivizing elected officials to pander to the fleeting whims and mercurial idealism of people who have been known occasionally to ingest detergent pods is national suicide.

"Sixteen-year-olds have good excuses for their lack of judgment: an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, a dreadful public-school system, and coddling parents. Those who want to empower kids to chime in on war and peace and marginal tax rates when they still have to ask their parents for permission slips before going on a class trip, however, do not.

" 'Across this nation, young people are leading the way — from gun violence to climate change to the future of work. They are organizing, mobilizing, and calling us to action,” explained Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley after introducing an amendment to lower the voting age in federal elections. “Our young people are at the forefront of some of the most existential crises facing our communities and our society at large.' ” . . .

Cartoons from TrueActivist