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Panel addresses lowering voting age to 16

Should the voting age be lowered to 16?

That and other questions about Americans’ most fundamental right came under discussion at a lunchtime forum in the Graham Auditorium at Washington State Community College on Thursday.

The session, attended by about 25 people, was in an expert panel format moderated by the college’s former vice president of academic affairs, Mark Nutter. The panel included A. Glenn Ray, an author, consultant and adjunct professor, Washington County deputy director of the board elections Peggy Byers, criminal justice professor Stephanie Harlow, instructor of business and management Greg Mitchell, professor of history and political science Brad Merritt, and Phi Theta Kappa alumnus Cody Lee, who is also the AmeriCorps coordinator for the college.

Whether 16- and 17-year-olds should be extended the right to vote provoked vigorous discussion and the greatest reaction from the audience, which was primarily young people.

Three of the panel members declared themselves in favor of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, one offered a limited endorsement of the idea and two said they were opposed to it.

Ray recalled the era when the right to vote was granted to those 18 to 20 years old through the 26th Amendment, passed in 1971. At the height of the Vietnam War protest era, it was thought that people eligible for the military draft – the age had been 18 since World War II – should also have the right to vote.

“I was part of that 18-year-old group, and I voted in the presidential election in 1972,” Ray said. “I would be in favor of an amendment to give 16-year-olds the vote. I’ve been very impressed with students’ hard work, creativity and abilities. I think young people get a bad rap.”

Byers said she would support such an amendment.

“I see a lot of enthusiasm among these young people. They talk about the topics, and I’ve seen it because we (the elections board) use Youth at the Booth, a state program to place them as poll workers,” she said. “We probably get the cream of the crop, but they have lots of enthusiasm, they get great marks from poll workers and the public.”

Harlow said she’s also in favor of allowing younger people to vote.

“I think the energy and enthusiasm is there, and as long as they would become involved and be informed, they should have that right,” she said.

Merritt offered a conditional endorsement, citing the Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, who said that states are “the laboratories of democracy.”

“Let the states do the experimenting,” Merritt said. “The national minimum wage started out in the states, and now we see states legalizing marijuana. That’s federalism.”

Federalism, as a general concept, is division of powers between state and federal governments.

Some cities, he noted, already have voting rights for 16- and 17-year-olds.

“Let them try it, see if it works,” he said. “We know 16- and 17-year-olds who are very mature, and 40- and 50-year-olds who are not.”

Mitchell and Lee said they would oppose such a measure, with Mitchell citing medical research that suggests the adolescent brain isn’t sufficiently developed.

“When you allow the vote, you empower, and with great power comes great responsibility,” he said. “We need to keep the age at 18, and reintroduce civics in school.”

Lee harked back to his own youth.

“In my own experience as a teenager, I was a lot more reactionary than responsive, governed by outside beliefs,” he said. “It takes time and maturity to sift through the information needed to vote, and I think 16 is a little young for that.”

Shayla Lightfritz, a 33-year-old student in computer technology and cybersecurity at the college, disagreed, and she posed a question to the panel.

“I know right now teens are having issues with big classes, overworked and underpaid teachers,” she said. “Would it have an impact on boards of education if their students could vote?”

Byers and Ray both said they thought it would.

“It always works that way, candidates respond to voters,” she said. “If they vote, somebody pays attention.”

“I think it would,” Ray said. “We vote on things that affect our lives.”

Lightfritz said after the meeting that she grew up in Marietta and attended her first city council meeting at six years of age when her uncle took her along.

“I heard them talking about closing a park, and I thought, ‘I don’t want that park to be closed,'” she said.

“I tried to vote for the first time on my 18th birthday, but it was on Election Day and I hadn’t registered, so I needed to wait for the next election,” she said. “I have a 16-year-old daughter who would love to vote.”

Lightfritz, who is president of the Tech Club at the college, said she married at age 15 and raised four children before getting back to her education.

“We bought a mobile home when I was 15, but I couldn’t vote on things that affected me as a homeowner,” she said. “My daughter is interested in the community, and she and her friends think if they could vote, the board of education would give them an ear, give them a better education.”

That education might include better preparation for civic life, she said.

“This education system, it’s cut down Ohio history, the basics of the Constitution. It’s almost like the government wants to train workers, not voters,” she said.

According to rollcall.com, New York Rep. Grace Meng in mid-August introduced an amendment to lower the voting age to 16. It was offered as a change to the 26th Amendment. The odds, the publication said, are steeply against it. The last successful amendment dates back to 1992 and was a minor change to the way wages are paid to members of Congress. Amendments require two-thirds passage in the House and Senate, and ratification by at least 38 state legislatures.

The panel also addressed questions that included strengthening voting rights for minorities and making Election Day a national holiday, as many other democracies do.

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