Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Page 7
AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column)
Expanding the Pool of Immature Voters Would Not Help
By DAVID KLINE
There is a good deal of truth to the saying, “With age comes wisdom,” even if it is an oversimplification.
Technically, it is life experience, not just the passage of time, which adds to a person’s grab-bag of knowledge. When we keep our eyes and ears open and absorb information everywhere we go, we do indeed get “older and wiser.”
Remember when you were 14 years old? If you were a typical teenager, you thought you knew everything, but now you realize you weren’t really that enlightened.
When you got your first job, you learned about the importance of punctuality and the work ethic. When you received your first paycheck, you learned how taxes work.
When you started driving, you realized that sitting behind the wheel of a real automobile was a lot different than practicing on a simulator or watching a traffic safety film.
When you got married, had a family, bought a house and signed a mortgage, you learned a great deal about the cost of borrowing. When the property tax bill arrived, you learned what happens when you swear in front of impressionable children.
All of this experience gives you more to draw from when you’re making important decisions.
Before any of us gained this experience and maturity, we were simply unable to make informed decisions.
And that is why it is utterly ridiculous that four state lawmakers want to change the law to allow 14-year-olds to vote.
Sure, there are some high school freshmen who follow politics closely. But even the most savvy doesn’t have the experience needed to cast a ballot. Not even close.
And what about the 14-year-olds who cut class, play video games all day, wear their baseball caps sideways and get all their news from Howard Stern? Do we really want these immature and uninformed people deciding a close election?
Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, is the leader of the movement to lower the voting age. It seems appropriate, since he often behaves like a 14-year-old. He is known for throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get his way and engaging in name-calling. For example, after having one of his proposals criticized in this column as being “weird,” he sent a hand-scrawled letter calling me “truly weird.” In 1995, he directed an obscene gesture toward Republican Assemblywoman Paula Boland during a floor debate, and wouldn’t apologize.
He also has some quirks more commonly seen in rebellious teens, including his often-unkempt appearance and his penchant for marking memos with a signature that can reach 4.5 inches in height.
Under the senator’s proposal, which he calls “Training Wheels for Citizenship,” the votes cast by minors would not carry the same weight as those cast by adults. The votes of 14- and 15-year-olds would count as one-fourth of an adult’s vote, and those cast by 16- and 17-year-olds would count as half a vote.
Vasconcellos says lowering the voting age “will truly serve to once again expand our democracy, and lead to an enormous broadening and deepening of engagement in our civil life and electoral processes.”
It also would add to the vote totals for left-wingers like Vasconcellos, research indicates. The Public Policy Institute of California has studied voting patterns in California and has determined that younger voters tend to be more liberal than older voters. Put another way, the more maturity a voter gains, the more likely he is to be a conservative.
Adding young liberals to the voting pool probably wouldn’t help Vasconcellos himself, since he is being forced into retirement by term limits after serving as a legislator since 1966. But the ideological component might be the reason that other far-left members of his party are discussing his proposal as if it’s serious, rather than joining the rest of us in laughing out loud.
— Capitol News Service
Copyright 2004, Metropolitan News Company