Hmm, yeah, I think we have fundamentally different positions if you see the average teen voting for less policing to be ill informed or disastrous. I don’t mean this in a snarky way, I mean I think we would have a lot of ground to cover before agreeing on this point one way or another.

The one thing I would consider is you probably don’t know what the average teen in your community thinks, because they do not have a political voice. Sure, they can attend community council meetings, but why do that when they aren’t able to choose who sits on that council? Teens being disengaged from community issues and teens not being able to have input on community issues are fundamentally linked.

I think these are fair points and definite possibilities! I don’t, however, know that I’d agree that these hypotheticals are enough to deny voting rights for local and school elections (remember, the 16 year olds won’t be voting for Bush in this scenario). So I don’t know if money and propaganda is quite so influential at that small scale–I haven’t found it to be in the past. Most people don’t even know their local elections are happening, much less know who the party line says to vote for.

Sure, and this is another gradation of voting; this would only be for local and school elections, which can have pretty immediate consequences for teens. In fact, 16 year olds (and others around that age) are the best positioned to have a say about school board policy, because they have been and currently are directly affected.

I do appreciate your perspective that a ‘stepwise’ system of adulthood can have huge benefits. I think this proposal actually fits quite nicely into it. They aren’t voting for president; they’re voting for the who will run the place they spend 8 hours per day.

Is there any part of this argument that does not also apply to college students? This is a genuine question, not intended as a gotcha. We allow 18 year olds to vote although they are subjected to many of the same pressures and inexperiences.