Last summer, I led supporters of lowering the voting age to 16 as both moderator & panel leader at the Frontiers of Democracy Conference in Boston, where we discussed the merits, support & challenges lowering the voting age would bring to a national audience of other fellow panelists. We had three days to speak to other fellow panelists, fellowship, share ideas & listen to other topics around strengthening democracy.
The Frontiers of Democracy has really opened up new ways of democratic thinking, serving as a forum for the sharing of ideas but also a platform to elevate the voices of other progressive thinkers. Last year brought the first opportunity to once again meet in person after the previous iterations were mostly done virtually- the pandemic had previously made changes necessary for the conference to continue from 2020-2022, so people who have been participating since the first conferences began in the mid 2010s were able to safely once again resume conference activities after a few years of virtual meeting.
In our panel, we members from Generation Vote, the National Youth Rights Association, the Children’s Voting Colloquium and Vote16 Research participated in the panel. For the three days of the conference, our members met each other, other panelists & the conference hosts to discuss lowering the voting age to 16. As a result, we were able to share our efforts with a much wider audience of other progressive thinkers who discussed our ideas along with how lowering the voting age could help their particular movements or issues. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
So this year, I’m planning to go back to Boston to this year’s Conference to continue that work. Several of the key organizations who participated at last year’s conference are also interested in participating again this year, and we would like to expand participation to other organizations as well.
We are currently building our panel for this year. If you would like to participate, contact me as soon as possible so we can coordinate & empower our young people.
#16ToVoteAdvocacyProject 