Asklemmy

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It depends on the country. There should be a local law in every country that says who can vote.

I have a 15yo kid with ASD. While she is highly functional, goes to a good public school, she can't decide which trash bin to use and will just freeze for a while, overthinking it... She can talk for hours about the anatomy of a cat, but knows nothing about politics, or how the world functions... I think 16 is too young to vote, but my perspective is warped.

30

26 when your brain is almost certainly fully myelenated to 65 since the future of young people is far more effected by elected officials than the futures of retired people.

https://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/tables/pop1.asp

70-something million children. Let's make them eligible to vote, and let parents vote on their behalf if they're too young. As another poster said, the parents who abuse that on "both sides" would more or less come out in the wash. The parents who took it seriously would probably adjust both their vote and their child's vote to benefit the child.

(One interesting thing is that would mean citizen children of non-citizen immigrants would get to vote.)

I don't think age is very relevant. Anyone who files a tax return should be allowed to vote.

Perhaps it should be decided by a cognitive test instead of age. This is a dangerous road though, because a lot of people with cognitive disabilities can and should be allowed to vote for themselves.

Maybe the test could be made to test if a person understands what an election is and them being able to form their own opinion.

The main issue isn't age, but rather that a lot of people vote for something that they think others expect them to vote for without ever forming an opinion of their own.

However those people should also be allowed to represent themselves, so I think all elections ought to have the option of voting for "shit, I don't know, I have no idea what's this is about", and if that vote came over a certain threshold, then the election should be void and postponed for a week.

If I had to change it I'd increase it.

The average late teenager is not suitable to have a say. And half of them are below average in that sense.

I'd like to tie it to actually being a tax payer, you pay you get a say in how your hard earned money is spent. But that would throw people who can't work under the bus.

Parents should be allowed a vote on behalf of their children until their children reach whatever age the jurisdiction allows independent voting.