Araceli Katalin McCoy: Why we should change the voting age to 16

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Published: 04-29-2024 5:23 PM

Modified: 04-29-2024 7:26 PM


Speaking as a Frontier student, if I think of a perfect political voting system, I think of everyone having a voice and fighting for what they believe in. I have a strong feeling that most of you feel the same way.

With many people having the choice to vote, it’s bizarre to me that so many people don’t vote. If I had the choice to vote, I would feel more involved in my community and feel like I had an impact on the way we spend our lives. If you go into college or even into your first full-time job and don’t know how to make decisions that impact you and your coworkers or your classes, it could have repercussions that could make people not trust you in the future. I can assume you would want to be able to make hard decisions, and being prepared to make them would give you more agency and effectiveness.

If we have people voting at a younger age, then the next generation will be able to make more executive decisions and more young people will be connected to their community.

It might seem like making the voting age one or two years younger wouldn’t make that much of a difference, but I think it would make people see fresh perspectives from a different age range. Having people voting at younger ages would make our communities more connected and prepared to make decisions that will affect everyone in the future.

Araceli Katalin McCoy

Whately