A photo of Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing up to Donald Trump in 2019. We need more Nancy Pelosi to do this. Not just lowering the voting age to 16, but other things too. (Photo courtesy of the Guardian)
On January 6th, former Speaker of the House & congressional representative of District 11, Nancy Pelosi, announced her plans to retire from public service as a Congresswoman from the California’s Bay Area region.
The decision comes after nearly 40 years of public service, which saw her rise to the Speakership twice during her service in office in the early 2000s & more recently in 2019. This marks the end of a historic era by the former & first & only female Speaker of the House.
However, Pelosi’s legacy doesn’t have to end there. We of the national Vote16 movement, as well as the state & regional efforts like Vote16CA have the obligation to continue one of her strongest endorsements while in office- that of lowering the voting age to 16.
Although Pelosi may no longer be in office after the end of her term in January 2027, it is up to us to continue that endorsement of lowering the voting age to 16, which has slowly gained traction since her first endorsement of the concept in 2015.
When I set out do my nationwide walk in 2015, I wasn’t counting on getting an endorsement from Nancy Pelosi. I didn’t even know about the endorsement to lower the voting age to 16 until months after I had reached California, when I was
#16ToVoteAdvocacyProject 