In general, I think making the right to vote conditional on some sort of intellectual test (which raising the voting age is, in some sense) suffers from at least three problems:
Firstly, my preference for democracy does not just stem from efficacy, but also from a moral angle. People should have a say in how their lives are run, even if they don’t satisfy someone’s criterion for intellectual eligibility.
Secondly, even from an efficacy angle there’s problems with it, and we have historical examples of this. Literacy tests have been used around the globe to effectively bar minorities from voting. E.g. black people in the United States, and indigenous peoples in Latin America. As a result, the needs of those populations were ignored, which I would consider a failure in efficacy.
And finally, literacy is highly subjective. Maybe today the government comes up with a test that you agree with (age 26 and up), but maybe a future government adjusts the test to a point where you disagree (only after retirement, after you’ve lived to see most aspects of life, and are therefore most fit to intelligently cast your vote).
Does this mean I believe in extending suffrage to five year olds? No. I believe there’s a balance to strike, and it’s not a black and white issue. But as the history of literacy tests shows, this is an area to tread incredibly carefully, and I get why people were so quick to downvote you.
In general, I think making the right to vote conditional on some sort of intellectual test (which raising the voting age is, in some sense) suffers from at least three problems:
Firstly, my preference for democracy does not just stem from efficacy, but also from a moral angle. People should have a say in how their lives are run, even if they don’t satisfy someone’s criterion for intellectual eligibility.
Secondly, even from an efficacy angle there’s problems with it, and we have historical examples of this. Literacy tests have been used around the globe to effectively bar minorities from voting. E.g. black people in the United States, and indigenous peoples in Latin America. As a result, the needs of those populations were ignored, which I would consider a failure in efficacy.
And finally, literacy is highly subjective. Maybe today the government comes up with a test that you agree with (age 26 and up), but maybe a future government adjusts the test to a point where you disagree (only after retirement, after you’ve lived to see most aspects of life, and are therefore most fit to intelligently cast your vote).
Does this mean I believe in extending suffrage to five year olds? No. I believe there’s a balance to strike, and it’s not a black and white issue. But as the history of literacy tests shows, this is an area to tread incredibly carefully, and I get why people were so quick to downvote you.