Why is Disenfranchisement Still Acceptable?
BY HENRY KOPESKY
-ism. That is how we define prejudice and discrimination today, by identifying the lines along which they occur. Racism, sexism, nationalism, classism; all are abhorrently common in the United States today. At the same time, however, each is largely frowned upon, even if it still persists subconsciously. Although the average American laughs at a sexist joke or a racist comedy sketch, one has to search the very fringe of political society before he or she can find someone who honestly believes in the disenfranchisement of a certain ethnic group or gender.
The shocking reality is that there is actually a group of millions of Americans—nearly seven percent of US citizens, in fact—who are legally barred from voting. How can this still be true? How can such an illiberal, prejudiced reality persist in a nation with such a progressive pedigree? The days of slavery were over generations ago. Women have been allowed to vote for nearly a century. Even some of the most subversive anti-voting measures have been outlawed for 50 years. Yet, somehow, America’s young people have still not earned their right to enfranchisement.
The political and economic philosophy of the United States is built primarily on the foundations laid hundreds of years ago by Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Montesquieu. Our government rules us only with our consent, and is responsible to the people. The definition of the people, though, has clearly changed since the Enlightenment. Then, the “people” were the landed, Anglo-Saxon elite. Today, though, the people have every color, creed, gender, orientation, and income, and each is treated equally on Election Day. Everybody who comes to the polls is entitled to one vote.
Another term for the central idea that the government only rules by the consent of the governed is the theory of the social contract, so called for its premise that, for a state to arise, all of its constituents must agree to surrender some degree of their natural freedom to the government. In doing so, those citizens agree to abide by commonly-created laws and leave disagreements to be arbitrated by the government. In a perfectly democratic and liberal society, therefore, everybody who is subject to the laws has a hand in making them. The opposite is also true, that everybody who is allowed a hand in making the laws must obey them. This is the philosophical bedrock on which our Constitution and other frameworks for making collective decisions are based. These principles have served the United States well in its two centuries of existence, though they have not always been applied judiciously and fairly. Exceptions include the years before 1865, when slavery was finally outlawed; the years before 1920, when women were given the vote; and the nearly 200 years that came and went before the passage of the 26th amendment, which granted 18 year-olds the right to vote. Yet, at all these times, Americans were still reminded of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is not unprecedented, then, for Americans to be told their country is free when that freedom only applies to some.
“Old enough to fight, old enough to vote!” was the slogan that pushed the 26th amendment through Congress. The most heated debate over lowering the voting age occurred during the Vietnam War, one of the most controversial conflicts in American history. Why, asked protestors and activists, could an 18-year-old kid be forced to fight, kill, and die for a leader he could not help elect or depose? Tens of thousands of young adults were killed or wounded in Vietnam, and not one of them assented, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, to being bound by the draft. Fortunately, reason won the day, and all adults were given the right to vote in 1971.
The problem of voting rights, however, has not yet been solved. Let’s revisit the phrase in the Declaration of Independence: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
In the words of the Declaration, governments are created among men, by men. Their purpose is to serve the people, not to rule them. Every person who is expected to obey the law must only fulfill that expectation because they agreed to by participating in democracy.
In the United States, youth sits on the outskirts, or, perhaps more appropriately, in the undercarriage of democracy. Young people under 18 in this country cannot vote. They cannot run for office. In other words, they are not granted the same political rights as the vast majority of Americans. At the same time, however, Americans below the age of 18 are expected to obey the edicts of a government in which they are not included. In fact, many states, as well as the federal government, routinely put minors on trial as if they were adults, flouting the spirit of the social contract as if it were not one of the most central tenets of this country.
The clear counterargument to lowering the voting age is that those below the age of 18 are not able to comprehend politics on the level of adults, an argument that does indeed hold water. It is obvious that people’s brains develop over time, which means that intellect exists on a gradient from birth to adulthood. Further, no two people develop at the same pace. There is therefore no standard age at which people reach a certain level of intelligence, and thus no real way to establish a sensible voting age that does not do some people a disservice. This common-sense realization does not resolve our primary question, however: if 18 is not an appropriate minimum voting age, then what is?
As they exist, our society’s age restrictions are baffling. It seems as if youth are granted rights in a random order, at completely arbitrary ages. Take driving, for instance. Some states allow teens as young as 14 the right to drive on their own to and from school; these high school freshmen can pilot a three-ton truck at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour, alone. Even opponents of the graduated driving laws that allow this are generally in favor of letting teenagers drive at 16. This highlights a peculiar dilemma, though: if a person can drive a car, why can they not vote? Surely, a fully-loaded truck and trailer is more dangerous than a single vote.
The reason for the apparent discrepancy between voting and driving ages lies in an “-ism” that did not make the list at the beginning of this article. After racism, sexism, and the others comes ageism, a form of prejudice so pervasive that it is not even widely recognized as being problematic, let alone the ridicule of equality that it is. Socially ingrained ageism is what led Jon Stewart to joke to Malala Yousafzai, an accomplished Pakistani activist, about adopting her; ageism is what leads to publicly-enforced curfews and bans on selling young people toilet paper or eggs, for fear of vandalism. Paternalism, beyond what is appropriate within a family or guardianship, is synonymous with marginalization. Although there is a clear place for raising children and helping them develop, that role too often seeps into the right of young adults to develop on their own, to have their own responsibilities, and to be taken seriously for the things of which they are capable. If we are able to put aside ageist preconceptions of what youth ought to be allowed to do, we realize that there is no reason that young people should be able to drive before they can vote.
There are two obvious solutions to this incongruity, both of which involve synchronizing the age of adulthood. The first solution is to elevate the driving age to 18. While this may seem like the common-sense approach to the issue (as it would likely cut down on teen driving fatalities), the logistics of a significant change to driving laws would be complex and difficult. The economic consequences, too, would be dramatic: how could the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of working teens commute to their jobs? Local governments would be adversely affected as well, as they would have to step in and guarantee transportation to and from school for millions of young adults who had been able to transport themselves before.
Creating a single age of adulthood at 16, though controversial, has none of these problems. Not only does it leave the states’ drivers’ licensure programs and the complex economics of age rights untouched, it fits with the political foundation of the United States. To prohibit the prosecution as an adult of any individual below the age of 16, while simultaneously giving all those above 16 their full adult rights, eliminates the hypocrisy inherent in today’s system of graduated rights, or rights that are granted as time passes. As long as different standards of adulthood persist, ageism will continue to mar American society and prevent the next great step in progressive reform, and why? In a liberal democracy, everybody’s voice is equal, or so they say.