Would you agree with a maximum voting age?

The elderly have earned their right to participate in this corporate lobbying sham that we call a democracy.

What a wonderful attitude @thanatos

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv If you disagree, please explain why. This is not about attitude.

@thanatos I know they have earned it, but some aren’t capable of practicing it.

No and No

only if we lower the drinking age.

@J0E Even a lot of adults don’t vote very responsibly but we don’t talk about taking away their right to vote. The argument is absurd. Even if someone helps you to vote, that doesn’t mean your vote is less valid.

You’d want the wisest citizens to be withheld a vote due to age & physical ability?! Absurd!

@thanatos: how do you figure your reply doesn’t reflect an attitude?

@thanatos I’m not talking about helping them vote, they voted for them…giving themselves two votes.

@J0E Voting twice is illegal. We should prosecute those people for stealing someone’s vote. Leave the elderly alone – what have they done wrong to deserve taking their votes away?

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv how do you figure it does? You’re the one who made the “attitude” remark – I think you should explain it, not me.

@SpatzieLover I realize some would be able to, but aren’t some pre-18 year olds also capable? Besides, I’m talking a pretty high max somewhere around 90.

i think someone can make a poor choice at any age.

If we had anyone worth voting for this question might be more relevant.

@thanatos not relevant.

The question isn’t age, it’s mental capacity, and it is a tricky issue. For example, developmentally disabled persons can and do vote, as do the mentally ill. Should they be able to? I think you have to allow them to because it is too difficult to define a cutoff. Besides, voting really becomes an exercise in statistics. All the mentally ill, developmentally disabled, or persons who have become mentally infirm due to age would basically be random noise in the election results and not have a statistically significant effect on the outcome.

Okay I’ll bite.

You’re so certain in your opinion of our democracy (democratic republic at least for a little while longer) that you see it as fact. So in your mind there’s no attitude involved.

We do not need to begin policing the polls. There are millions of voters who are uninformed, have no real knowledge of the candidates’ histories or policies, and who make their voting decision based on things like shared religion or race. If you wanted to take away their voting rights you’d have to reinstate the methods once used in the south to keep black people from voting and to do that is totalitarian. There is no way to eliminate uninformed voting without eliminating the rights of the entire voting demographic.

Bad, bad, bad idea.

@holden We already police the polls, it’s called the 26th amendment.

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv You’re saying I have an attitude because I’m confident of my opinion? Wouldn’t many people also fit that description? If so, you must be regularly bothered by people having “attitudes”. It sounds like a difficult life.

@holden Well said.

[Not Mod says] Stay on topic please.

Sorry @J0E

That’s like going back to the old days when we had literacy tests to be allowed to vote. Who is going to set the standard for who gets to vote, and how will the competency test be delivered?

@daloon Probably the same people who already set the standard to vote.

@J0E HEY! I plan on living past 100…MOST people in my family live to be OVER 90. What you are proposing is ridiculous & ageist.

And, NO I do not think a less than 18yr old should vote, either.

Some watery tart throwing sicimtars ain’t no way for a system of government to operate.

@SpatzieLover Calm down, I’m not anti-elderly and calling me ageist is insulting. I just simply think if there is a minimum there should be a maximum.

I also think SpatzieLover should be able to vote after turning 100. We shouldn’t let JOE take that away from us.

Children are a different matter from elderly persons. There is an established legal standard for when a child becomes an adult, and while it is imperfect, it is based on the fact that children lack the emotional maturity, education, and judgment required of a full citizen. If children are to be allowed to vote then they should also be tried as adults for all crimes. We must have a cut off between adulthood and childhood, there is not legal or biological reason to establish such a cutoff at the top of the age scale.

do we need to call in a mod?
I also agree with a voting age minimum. Adults pay taxes, adults are conscripted, adults own property, adults own businesses. Children do not need a say in how these institutions are run.

I believe cutting off voting rights for those that are the most experienced and have had the longest to see the effects of politics and government would harm conservatives.

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv We’re in agreement finally.

@thanatos I am fully aware that some people would still be absolutely capable to vote, but so are some people who are not 18 yet.

@J0E But there are many people in between 18 and 100 who also make their voting decisions with questionable wisdom. But in a supposed democracy you take the good with the bad and arbitrarily choose an age after which most people should be able to make a responsible decision.

All I’m saying is you take that very same logic and put it towards the end of the spectrum along with the beginning.

@J0E In order to do what you’re suggesting, we would need some kind of qualification test for anyone who wants to vote at any age. And then that test would also be subject to abuse.

No, that would accomplish nothing. There are young people pressured into voting a certain way, or who are incapable of thinking logically or at all who get to vote. @holden said it best in his/her response.

So everyone has no problem excluding younger people, but not older people.

Yet I was the one called ageist.

@J0E refer to my above comment.

@JOE Yes, I have no problem excluding children, because children already have limited rights and responsibilities under law, based on the fact that they have not acquired the necessary maturity (this is biological) and education. While the age of 18 is somewhat arbitrary, there must be an age, and over a very long time our society has decided that 18 works very well.

Interesting saying I heard once:

“People start their lives in diapers, and end their lives in diapers.”

Children are not considered completely competent human beings. The age of competence can not be determined fairly, except by something that is really easy to measure, like age, so that’s what it is.

Once you are deemed competent, it is only possible to deem a person incompetent is there is some accepted test for competence in decision-making. Unfortunately, there is no such test. So it can’t be applied for children or for adults.

This is not like a driver’s license where there is an accepted competence test. You can’t test decision-making capability, so there is no accurate way to know the age of competence. Age is merely the only acceptable measurable test. 18 is an arbitrary number, but it is socially acceptable, so there it is.

@J0E That^^^^Is a ageist generalization. Not everyone ends their life in a diaper.

@SpatzieLover It’s just a joke I heard once.

@J0E I wasn’t sure earlier but your so-called joke confirms it. You’re a troll.

@thanatos I am absolutely not a troll, I do not appreciate being called one either.

@thanatos name calling is a form of trolling.
@J0E I got yo’ back, buddy.

I’ve heard the joke…TRUST me, it’s NO joke once you’ve cared for a once vital, strong, Italian man. All you need is one teary shared breakfast with your grandpa saying to you, “I’ve become a burden”, to realize how much that is not a joke.

Trolls appreciate being called trolls about as much as the elderly appreciate it when you joke about incontinence. As soon as you remove your insensitive joke about the elderly I will consider retracting my remark about you being a troll.

@holden Trolling is also a form of trolling.

and as someone who has been watching his grandmother succumb to the brutality of Alzheimers for the last three years, I second @SpatzieLover‘s comment.
@thanatos what?

@holden Sending helpful healing thought to you, your family & your gram

@thanatos

Yeah, because anyone who pisses you off is a troll. Not. I’m so sick of the word troll. It’s a meaningless buzzword. It’s like the way “commie” was used during the McCarthyist days.

@Question

Anyway, I pretty much wholeheartedly agree with @daloon in that if we wanted to set a maximum age, there would have to be some kind of test to do it, and if there was such a test, it could apply to people under 18 as well. But I also question how badly the voting is really affected by incompetent older people voting?

@DominicX I also question how badly the voting is really affected by incompetent older people voting?

My guess, most of them already think badly enough about their condition that they refuse to go to the booth. If they do get to the booth, it’s due to family persistence and affirmations like “C’mon gramma, we’ll make it an afternoon outing. We’ll take you out to lunch after…it’ll be fun!”

This Flutherite with a grandfather and great aunt with advanced Alzhiemers can’t stand people that can’t take a joke.

GA @xdominic

Those under the age of 18 who work, pay taxes, yet they have no representation in congress, i.e. they can’t vote. Our whole nation was founded on this now ignored principal.

16 to vote
18 to drink

On the reverse, my mother is incapacitated and her mind comes and goes, yet she is a voter. After the recent elections I asked how she voted, she said that she didn’t know because my dad filled it out for her. Not okay.

I don’t think it’s so much age as mental capacity. But how would we test such a thing?

No to both.

I don’t know anyone who is more passionate about voting than my ninety-year-old mother. One of her joys in life is following politics, reading all the news magazines, and casting her vote when the time arrives. Telling her she was too old to vote would be the equivalent of putting a nail in her coffin. Yes, she’s slower than she once was, but she knows more about what is going on in Washington than I do—and certainly more than the vast majority of Americans.

@tabbycat I agree. My grandpa was known by name by all local officials…Why? Every Monday he’d call to complain or compliment about whatever he’d read about them doing with taxpayer money in the Sunday paper. He would get a hand delivered blue book each year from “his” mayor, too. All of my elderly relative keep active in at least local politics in a similar way

@tabbycat No one is saying every elder is incapable. Read this:

I don’t know anyone who is more passionate about voting than my sixteen-year-old sister. One of her joys in life is following politics, reading all the news magazines, and casting her vote in online polls when the time arrives. Telling her she is too young to vote is the equivalent of strapping on a diaper. Yes, she’s younger than most, but she knows more about what is going on in Washington than I do—and certainly more than the vast majority of Americans.

It goes both ways.

@J0E Would you want her convicted as an adult if she committed a crime?

@SpatzieLover That is another topic by itself.

@JOE, I agree, I wish I had been able to vote much earlier than I was. I certainly followed politics and could have made an informed vote at sixteen, even though I certainly matured in the period of time between then and when I was able to cast my vote. But at sixteen, I knew I would get to vote eventually, and I took solace in that. If I were ninety and the vote were taken away from me, even though I was very well informed, I would definitely find that one less reason to go on living.

And if not all elderly people are incapable of voting, how do you weed out the ones that are from the rest?

@tabbycat I have no idea, I would ask the people who decided the minimum age.

@JOE, And who are they?

Good question.

I think the only thing we’ve settled on here is that age is only a number. People can make informed decisions at twelve or at 100. And people can be incapable at either age—or, for that matter, any age in between!

So, what is the answer? No restrictions whatsoever, or perhaps voting tests. Both of these seem to opening up huge cans of worms.

No, I don’t. I feel both @gussnarp and @holden summed up my reasoning nicely. I also admit to being a bit biased- my 90 year old grandmother takes great pride in voting, and goes to EVERY poll (as did her husband, prior to his death 4 years ago). She watches the news daily and likely knows more about what she’s voting for than the average American.

No. Their interests still need to be represented.

I’d like to see a maximum driving age. Some senior citizens have no business operating motor vehicles.

@Bluefreedom some states do not let senior citizens renew their drivers license on line, they must come in for an eye test past a certain age.

@JLeslie. That’s a smart move. ALL states should adopt that same policy.