Youth Vote Story

It came up this week with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal) who talked up this idea for bringing the voting age down to sixteen years old. 

The odds of this happening?  Federally.....zero chance.  In the California state election?  I might predict within four years that it'll be written into the state constitution.  There might be five or six states that go this way over the next decade.

My general view, if you qualified the sixteen-year-old to vote, then why not allow them the chance to buy cigarettes, beer, booze, rifles, etc?  Why not allow the sixteen-year-old to 'test-out' of high school and leave by the end of the 10th grade? 

Personally, I'd rather go the opposite direction and say adult status starts at age 21, limiting the voting situation a bit more.

But with all this chatter, and the odds of having 1.5-million teenage voters in a California election.....are you creating a nightmare somewhere down the line?  Imagine the scenario where some fake beach-bum character comes out of nowhere....registers himself to run for governor, and with this mass appeal to sixteen to twenty year-olds.....you end up with some Hollywood character as governor of the state.  For the over-forty crowd, it'd scare the crap out of them. 

So prepare for the introduction of youth voting and it's consequences.