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fatguyinalittlecoat said:
When people ask me who the serious thinkers of the day are that I read and respect, my usual reply is fatguyinalittlecoat from the Internet. They know - trust me, THEY KNOW.
I think I would be ok with starting with the life expectancy age minus some random years (say 10)? Life expectancy is 78.74 years according a quick Google search - take away 10 and we'd get a max voting age of 68 or so.
I said in other thread that it may be a horrible idea - why do you think it's silly or bad? Unlike some folks around here, I don't think I'm the smartest person in the room - far from it. Also, I try to be open minded. Convince me this is a bad idea.
Yeah no way that happens. Gotta start with, like, people over 100. Then we gradually bring it down over time.
To start with no one knows how long they are going to live. You can be 90 years old and live past 100 or 18 years old and die tomorrow. You should vote on the candidate that represents what you think is best for the country/state/locality, it doesn't matter whether you are around to see it or not.
The fact that you think people should vote a certain way doesn't mean people actually do vote that way.
I agree with this but to some degree is a separate conversation - my argument centers more around mental capacity and an age limit is the only "fair" thing I can think of is an age limit. Also, things change and the vast majority of people don't move nearly as fast as technology and "the world around us" does. My 97 year old grandmother has no clue about anything technology related - her idea of what is best for the country may be that we eliminate online banking because in her day she could talk to the bank manager.
One item that I was going to bring up was to raise the minimum age at the same time you introduce a maximum age. Not by much but I could see making it 21 or 25. I think this idea would be even more unpopular.
Well I'm biased as they come on this one, but yeah, I'm much happier with the way 18 year olds vote than the way 88 year olds vote.
Of course not but I'm not the one suggesting taking their voting rights away.
Well I think it needs to be characterized less as disenfranchisement and more as a life cycle event. We aren't taking away voting rights from a single group for the benefit of other groups, like when minorities or women were prohibited from voting. We're equally limiting voting for everyone in the population. Every person has the exact same opportunity to vote -- from ages 18 to 85, or whatever.
I'm cool with it if we are also limiting the age of our elected officials. Let's say make the cut-off age 71.
The hardest part would be passing the whole thing. The people who vote the most would be cutting themselves off, not likely. And the politician who suggests it just voted himself out of office.
Voter suppression is a good thing when it results in incompetent voters being removed from the electorate. That's the main reason why we have a minimum voting age in the first place -- people under the age of 18 are generally unqualified to have any sort of intelligent opinion on the issues of the day. Of course, there are lots of bright and well-informed minors out there, but you have to draw the line someplace unless you want to go with competency testing.
Sure. We don't even trust these people to buy alcohol.
How do we feel about people under the age of 18 being allowed to proxy their vote to someone over 18 that can represent their interests?
No. My kids would make Dan TDM their proxy.
This is intriguing. How about a mix? People vote for a geographic rep, an age-based rep, a fiscal policy rep, a social policy rep, and a foreign policy rep?
It's gonna be hard to top. However, so far, 6 people are totally insane. If ever a poll needed to show the votes, this is it.
