Pictured above is my registration badge from last year’s Frontiers of Democracy Conference in Boston. This June, we’re returning a year later to finish the job.
This year is the first full post-pandemic year. Since the end of the Pandemic Health Emergency(PHE) last May, we have seen an effort to return to the routine- both good & bad. While people are once again able to socialize, eat out, travel, visit friends & family and do a host of other pre-pandemic activities in contrast to the pandemic lockdowns and social distancing we saw from early 2020 up until last summer, the negative sides of normalcy have returned once more: disenfranchisement, double standards & ageism.
So last summer, I did something that hadn’t been seen since early on during the pandemic- I helped convene a multi-organizational panel at Boston’s Frontiers of Democracy Conference that discussed the merits of lowering the voting age to 16. Although the video that I reference above had supporters meeting online, our panel in Boston had participants both online and in person, and had contributors that I brought together from several organizations that were supportive of lowering the voting age. We want to replicate that at this year’s conference, except bigger and better than last year.
Not even a year prior to last summer’s conference, in late 2022, Germany had already lowered its national voting age to 16 while Brattleboro in Vermont became the seventh city and and second state, respectively, to have enfranchised more young voters. This year, I want to continue that trend until every city and every state in the United States has lowered its voting age to 16, or at least considers the idea.
This year, I want to expand the reach of our group as well as the diversity of our group members. Last year had supporting contributors from Generation Vote, the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA), the Children’s Voting Colloquium and Vote16 Research Group. We even got in touch with March For Our Lives of all groups. This year, we’re also in touch with Vote16USA!
I want to try to channel the same spirit and energy as last year’s conference panel, except larger, more diverse and more expansive with regards to outreach, meaning reaching out to organizations, even if they aren’t participating, as well as to media outlets. Our efforts should get as much coverage as possible.
A little more than a decade ago, we had no cities in the United States with a voting age of 16. By 2013, we had Takoma Park, Maryland. In less than a decade, we’ve doubled the number of states that have one city that lowered their voting age to 16. While it is progressive, it is also slow. Real change won’t happen until there is some national effort to lower the voting age- across several regions, and with the help of dedicated individuals and organizations. House Joint Resolution 16 currently has the power to do that, so this is why it is important to have some sort of presence at the conference to be involved to promote the idea, but also legislation that can help make it reality.
The pandemic united many people, regardless of age, in the common threat that the virus posed, but now that we’re not in the same pandemic state as we were several years ago, we’re seeing an age gap once again emerge as youth-oriented issues are again being overlooked in favor of older, enfranchised citizens. This is reflective of our current presidential candidates. There’s no new energy, choices or change from the election we had at the onset of the pandemic, or for that matter, the other previous elections. The same cycle does nothing but repeat itself every four years. There won’t be any change until that cycle is broken.
Why wait to do in 2028, or 2032, or 2036, or 2040, etc., what we can already do in 2024 with House Joint Resolution 16 now? I think we stand a decent chance if we made a concerted effort to lower the voting age at this time rather than at some other point in the future, while the young people we are trying to help continue to be disenfranchised and negatively affected by issues that they can’t weigh in on.
I am calling on all supporters of lowering the voting age to 16, people addressing issues relevant to young people and any supporter willing to help with those efforts to work together with me. Let’s make 2024 the year that we finally lower the national voting age to 16 to empower our future leaders of America!
Jester Jersey
#16ToVoteAdvocacyProject 