Don't raise the voting age

Sometimes it's hard to know whether an outlandish policy proposal is something a politician intends to pursue or if he's just trying to attract media attention. So it is with Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's proposal to raise the voting age from 18 to 25. On the one hand, it is in keeping with the Republican Party's ongoing drive to restrict voting. Or perhaps Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old entrepreneur from Ohio, floated the idea knowing that it would draw condemnation. After all, one famous theory holds that there's no such thing as bad publicity, and Ramaswamy apparently could use some publicity. According to the Real Clear Politics polling average, Ramaswamy has the support of 3.4 percent of potential GOP primary voters. That puts him well behind former President Donald Trump, who sits at 55 percent support. Trump is trailed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 20.7 percent, former Vice President Mike Pence at 6 percent and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 4 percent. A few other potential or announced candidates are running behind Ramaswamy. If attention was his goal, then Ramaswamy succeeded. His terrible and anti-democratic idea made it into the national conversation, but it doesn't appear that raising the voting age has much support. Ramaswamy told Politico that most of his staff opposed the idea. For good reason. As Ramaswamy acknowledged, when the United States was just starting out, who had the right to vote was limited. Over the years, however, the nation has rightly expanded voting access, not constricted it. That has meant granting the franchise to Blacks and women, for example, even if there were those who fought hard to prevent those necessary changes. Unfortunately, the fight to protect voting access remains ongoing, particularly in Republican-led states, such as Ohio, where GOP lawmakers have made voting harder through limits on early voting and strict voter ID requirements. One Republican political strategist suggested last month that conservatives should take steps to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatically mailing ballots to registered voters, The Washington Post reported. All of those suggestions undermine one of the core principles of the United States, which is that we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Unsurprisingly, Ramaswamy's proposal would benefit the GOP. NBC News reported that exit polls showed that 63 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Democrats in 2022, compared to 35 percent who voted for Republicans. It's also not as if Republicans are looking to raise the age limit for other constitutionally protected rights. For example, some Democrats have pushed to raise the age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21, but that's been met with strong pushback from the GOP. Last week a federal judge in Virginia — appointed by a Republican — ruled that a prohibition on 18- to 20-year-olds buying handguns was unconstitutional. Imagine the outrage from Republicans if someone were to suggest raising the age for buying a gun to 25. It's worth remembering that until the 26th Amendment was ratified in 1971, voting was restricted to those 21 and over. Raising the voting age would require another amendment. The 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, came about in large part as a response to the draft, which funneled young Americans into the military to fight the war in Vietnam. One of the strongest arguments in favor of lowering the voting age was that if you were old enough to be drafted, you were old enough to vote. Perhaps anticipating that argument, Ramaswamy's proposal includes exceptions for those who serve in the military or as first responders. Those who aren't serving in those capacities would need to pass a citizenship test — the same one administered to prospective naturalized citizens — to earn the right to vote. "I want more civic engagement," Ramaswamy told the Post. "My hypothesis is that when you attach greater value to the act, we will see more 18-to-25-year-olds actually vote than do now." The idea that someone has to pass a test or fulfill some other requirement beyond citizenship and being 18 years old in order to access the ballot box reminded us of the abhorrent literacy tests and poll taxes that too long were used to keep Black voters away from the polls. American democracy has gotten better and more representative as the years have worn on. There's no reason to go backward.