Happy new year to readers across the country. If there’s any indication of the growing efforts around lowering the voting age awareness efforts from last year, the next few years are really hopeful, particularly 2025.
There’s both good news & bad news when it comes to the national efforts to lowering the voting age to 16. While the bad news appears to be that we unfortunately won’t get a vote on the existing House Joint Resolution 16 bill authored by Rep. Grace Meng, the good news is we can count on a new iteration of the bill shortly after the new Congress, the 119th Congress, is formally installed later this month (Grace Meng personally liked our post on Twitter/X as we were building our team at last year’s Frontiers of Democracy in Boston).
The youth voting efforts as a whole, both national as well as local, regional and/or municipal level, cannot come at a more crucial time: we all saw the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. Unless you’ve been living under a political rock for either an extended period of time or since the beginning of time, this development doesn’t bode well for many social issues that either affect youth in the immediate future, i.e. gun violence or in the long term, such as climate change, based on previous voting patterns of those aligned with the current incoming administration’s party’s ideals.
That is not to say that efforts around dialogue on lowering the voting age would be futile. Actually, the current developments would make the efforts even more conducive than if the reverse outcome of the election had happened. One should not also be tied down with the notion that lowering the voting age is a partisan issue- at times, it can also achieve bipartisan support, as mentioned in this article.
While efforts at the local level are important, so is national dialogue, as these issues are not limited to any one geographical location. Nor is the issue of lowering the voting age, as we’ve seen efforts nationally(HJR16) as well as locally(MD, VT, CA, NJ, etc.).
It is crucial- it is imperative, that there be some collaboration & coordination among both organizations as well as individuals. Now more than ever compared to previous elections cycles. Also, while local efforts may be accomplished by smaller or even one organization, maybe even by a small group of determined individuals like with Albany CA, a national effort definitely would not. It would require a diverse team of people, working with several organizations. This is so totally doable at this time, yet few have even tried doing so.
Obviously, this is costing us big time in terms of youth not being adequately being represented because they’re not voting but also finding solutions for issues that aren’t limited to just affecting young people.
One shouldn’t have to look further than my own work on a microscopic scale, such as when I was able to bring several partners from multiple organizations to coordinate on a panel in Boston during the Frontiers of Democracy Conference, highlighting the importance of lowering the voting age at the national level but also the diversity of those who support working towards achieving that goal.
I believe that local & national efforts, when conducted in synchronicity, can have positive effects for both. By making the issue more mainstream, a topic of discussion as well as discussing the possible solutions to the problem. Some efforts have worked better than some, but it is also why collaboration is crucial so that we can learn what worked, what didn’t & how that would be applicable to all ongoing efforts. There’s also a need for post-success collaboration, because as we’ve also seen with Oakland & Berkeley, implementation is a challenge that many go through.
Assuming we get another iteration of Meng’s bill with this incoming Congress like we’ve had with previous Congresses, a national coordinated effort would make the most sense in light of that. The other option would be to continue the same strategy we’ve been doing, with some success, at a slower rate, for which, in the case of Berkeley & Oakland that had lowered their school board voting age to 16 in 2016 & 2020, respectively, then we’ll likely see the same presidential rerun outcome of 2024 in both presidential elections years as well as midterms. If you’re all for that latter potion the next few years, I suggest sticking with that. However, if you’d like a more streamlined approach, one that takes advantage of recent gains such as the finally implemented school board voting in Berkeley & Oakland, or Brattleboro, VT, or Albany, CA for general elections, or even international places, like Germany & Belgium, who have recently lowered their national voting age as well the last two years, then I’m all for it. We can talk.
Whether or not the U.S. sees a rerun of the 2024 presidential election will depend on what supporters of this issue do between now & the next big election. I always hear talks about people wanting to support the idea of lowering the national voting age to 16 or for HJR 16, but little actual action towards those goals. What I do see at the same time, though, is plenty of complaining that “Congress is not representative of younger people” or “Congress isn’t looking at issues that particularly affect youth(see above)” or whatever other grievance that a lowered voting age could address.
Just know that if supporters of lowering the voting age again fail to organize around the movement like we’ve seen in previous years, then proceed to complain about how a future election’s outcome isn’t “representative of their needs”, I’ll the be the first to say “I told you so” if a lowered voting age could have changed the outcome.
Being the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I want close with one of his most famous quotes of the civil rights movement. Just as it was the right thing to do to fight for just in King’s time, when he said that “The time is always right to do what is right”, so I tell readers today that fighting for lowering the voting age to 16 in all its forms is the right thing to do right now.
#16ToVoteAdvocacyProject 