One more thing on youth voting: There are a lot of folks in my mentions saying kids aren’t cognitively developed enough to vote. But it’s not clear to me what that means.
At 12, the typical kid is more than able to meet baseline standards for voting—understanding what an election is, learning about candidates, managing the act of voting.
When we bar kids from making choices they’re not mature enough to make, it’s generally because we’re worried that they’ll do harm to themselves or others if allowed to choose.
But if I vote using a “bad” decision-making process—if I flip a coin in the voting booth, say—it’s not at all obvious that I’m doing harm to anyone in the way we typically use that word.
If I let my twelve-year-old pick who I vote for, is anyone harmed? If not, who is harmed if she casts that vote herself?
