Frequently Asked Questions About Youth Voting Rights

Just as young people often have opinions about music, fashion, religion, technology, and film that differ from their parents, they're also capable of forming their own political views. In Scotland, when sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were allowed to vote on independence in 2014, only about half voted the same way as their parents. Young people consistently demonstrate unique perspectives shaped by their own experiences and values.

Research shows that by age sixteen, in situations allowing for calm deliberation—like voting—teens perform just as well as adults at gathering information, weighing options, and making reasoned decisions. More importantly, we don't screen existing adult voters for decision-making capacity and many existing voters have significant impairments, are poorly informed, or both. It is wrong to hold young people to a standard that we don't hold anyone else to.

The question isn't whether young people enter the voting booth with the same perspective as older voters, but whether they bring perspectives that are relevant and valuable for informing policy decisions. They clearly do. Young people have direct experience with many crucial issues facing our nation—from school safety to inequality to climate change to social media regulation. The fact that young people live different lives than older voters and face different challenges in the years ahead enriches our democracy.

Many young people today are highly engaged with civic issues. However, if we're concerned about civic knowledge, the solution is better education—not disenfranchisement. We don't test adult voters on their knowledge of government and many are woefully ignorant about our democracy. We can best address that by preparing children to be active citizens.

Yes. Where youth voting rights have been extended, turnout is often higher than older age groups. Young people are leading movements for social change and want a formal political voice. While some young people may not want to vote, that is true of every demographic group.

Singling out young voters is misguided because special interest advertising, demagogues, and misinformation campaigns present threats to the entire voting public. We should be worried about 15-year-olds on TikTok and 82-year-olds on Facebook and everyone in between. And we should work to combat efforts to manipulate voters across the board.

Including more voices strengthens democracy. Young people are directly affected by political decisions and will live longest with their consequences. Their exclusion is what distorts our system.

This argument echoes one of the talking points of those opposed to women's suffrage more than a century ago—that women didn't merit voting rights because they were "already represented" by their husbands and fathers. Democracy means giving everyone a say. A family of five should have five votes, not two.

Young people already grapple with serious issues like gun violence, racism, police brutality, housing and food insecurity, substance abuse, and mental health problems. Denying them a voice in addressing these challenges doesn't protect them—it just amplifies their sense of hopelessness and ensures that the problems are less likely to be solved.

No. This "wait your turn" argument fails for several reasons. First, tragically, many young people never get their turn to vote because they die before reaching eighteen—from gun violence, car accidents, and preventable illnesses that our current elected leaders have failed to adequately address. Second, for many pressing issues like climate change, there is a critical window for action. Telling a ten-year-old concerned about environmental catastrophe to wait eight-plus years to vote for president or members of Congress may mean waiting until it's too late to prevent irreversible damage. Third, even for those who do eventually get to vote, the "wait your turn" argument ignores the real and immediate consequences that young people face from political decisions made without their input. A fourteen-year-old who loses access to mental health services due to budget cuts misses out on that critical care as a minor and can't vote away that deprivation when she turns eighteen. A sixteen-year-old farmworker paying Social Security taxes today has no say in congressional decisions that may mean he won't receive benefits when he retires. The decisions made by government today shape young people's lives in the present and in the decades to come—they deserve a voice in those decisions now, not just eventually.

No. Different rights and responsibilities can have different age requirements based on relevant factors. One of the reasons that it makes sense to lower the voting age but maintain the age at which a person can purchase a gun, join the military, drive a car, or get married is that the individual cost of making a "mistake" is much, much less in the case of voting. The rest of the voting public helps protect against individual errors and the downside of a "bad" vote is only experienced collectively. Likewise, voting requires a lot less of a person than flying a plane or being a soldier.

No. Again, it is entirely logical to have different age criteria for different contexts (e.g., drinking alcohol, walking home alone from school, making independent medical decisions, working in a job). And it is important to understand that there is a robust scientific basis for lowering the voting age and maintaining (or even raising) the age of criminal responsibility. Areas of the brain involved in voting relevant cognition mature much earlier, on average, than areas of the brain implicated in criminal conduct. So, the average sixteen-year-old might be just as adept at making reasoned decisions in moments allowing calm deliberation as the average fifty-year-old, but struggle in moments of hot cognition with impulse control and peer pressure.

No. The voting age of 18 was set in 1971 during the Vietnam War and reflected the perceived injustice of drafting someone into the military without allowing that person a say in their government. It wasn't based on research about cognitive development or voting capacity.

This argument fails for several reasons. First, many people under eighteen do pay taxes—sales tax when they make purchases, income tax from part-time jobs and summer employment, and property tax through rent. Second, we don't require tax payment from any other voters. Retirees who no longer pay income tax keep their right to vote, as do adults who are unemployed or whose income falls below the tax threshold. Our country has embraced the principle that people affected by government decisions should have a say in them whether they pay taxes or not. Indeed, we passed the 24th Amendment to abolish poll taxes that were used, historically, to deny African Americans, poor white people, and women access to the ballot. Finally, this "no taxation without representation" argument actually supports youth voting rights: it's fundamentally unfair to tax young workers while denying them a voice in how that money is spent.

The fight for youth voting rights stands in solidarity with—not in opposition to—other movements for voting rights. Many of the flawed arguments once used to deny women, non-property holders, and people of color the vote (e.g., lack of capacity, not wanting or needing the vote, being adequately represented by others, requiring protection) are eerily similar to those used today against young people. Expanding voting rights has always been about making our democracy more inclusive and representative. Each expansion of the franchise has strengthened our democracy, and youth enfranchisement would continue this proud tradition.

We support eliminating all age restrictions on voting. While lowering the voting age to 16 is an important and achievable first step, particularly given that other nations have already achieved this milestone, the justifications for stopping at 16 are weak. While research shows that by age sixteen, on average, teens perform comparably to adults when it comes to voting-relevant cognition, we allow millions of below average adults to vote, no questions asked, so that capacity threshold simply isn't relevant. The actual threshold for voting capacity in America, revealed in rare instances when a court considers removing an elderly adult's ability to vote, is remarkably low—in general, as long as an adult has some basic idea of how voting works, they can continue to cast a ballot. Indeed, we go to great lengths to accommodate adult voters who need help, from providing ballots in different languages to allowing assistance in the voting booth, because we recognize that democracy requires hearing all voices. A better approach would be to switch from an arbitrary age cutoff to a system where young people can begin voting whenever they express a desire and ability to do so. For very young children, parents or guardians could serve as proxies—casting votes in their children's interests and consulting with them as they develop political views—until the children are ready to take over voting for themselves. This would ensure that all citizens have their interests represented in our democracy from birth and would encourage early civic engagement and education.

The logistics of lowering the voting age are straightforward—remember we already did it once in the United States, when we lowered the age to eighteen, and more than half a dozen municipalities in the U.S. have demonstrated how to lower the age to sixteen. Just as we currently allow seventeen-year-olds in many states to register to vote if they will turn eighteen by Election Day, we would allow younger citizens to register when they met the revised age requirement. Schools could assist with voter registration, just as many high schools already do. On Election Day, jurisdictions could set up polling places at schools (a common practice in many countries) or excuse student absences to vote (as we already do for eighteen-year-old high school students). Eliminating the voting age is also straightforward. For very young children, parents or guardians would register to serve as their voting proxies. These proxies would be obligated to act in the child's best interests and consult with the child as appropriate. We currently use proxies in other voting contexts and parents often act for their young children in decision-making contexts, as they do in making medical, educational, and other choices. Once a young person expressed a desire to vote independently, they could file a simple form transferring voting control from their proxy to themselves. This transfer of voting rights from proxy to child could happen at any time—whether the child was ten or sixteen—ensuring that young people could participate in democracy as soon as they were ready.

This concern reflects a misunderstanding of both proxies and parental obligations. Parents and guardians are already legally required—and explicitly trusted by courts—to act in their children's best interests in numerous contexts. Likewise, we already require and trust proxies—individuals authorized to act on behalf of another person or entity—to follow the wishes of the principal and act in the principal's interests, not their own. In many of these contexts—like medical decision-making or business settings where millions of dollars are at stake—the consequences of self-interested proxy behavior are much graver than with parental voting. Moreover, it's vital to understand how closely aligned parents and young children's interests usually are, particularly in the first years of life (before the period when we might expect children to begin exercising their right to vote independently). Most parents love and want the best for their kids, and even those acting primarily out of self-interest would be expected to cast their votes in support of candidates and policies that would benefit their young children. Generous paid care leave and free high-quality pre-K, for example, are hugely beneficial to parents but also hugely beneficial to their kids. A key reason that we don't have those things in the United States is that there is currently no representation for the interests of millions of babies and toddlers in our democracy.

The same way we do for all voters: providing civic education, access to reliable information, and opportunities for political engagement. Many schools already have successful programs that prepare young people for democratic participation through courses in government and current events, debate teams, student government, and youth-led activism. But too many school districts neglect civic education, treating it as optional or supplemental to core subjects like math. The real question isn't whether we can prepare young people to vote—we already know how to do that—but whether we will invest in giving all young people the tools to be informed and engaged citizens.

Yes. A diverse set of countries, including Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Greece, Indonesia, and Nicaragua, allow citizens to vote at 16 and/or 17 in all elections. In 2025, the British government announced that it would allow 16-and 17-year-olds to vote in all UK elections, the first reduction in voting age for more than 50 years. A broader set of nations, including Belgium, Estonia, Germany, and Israel, has extended more limited voting rights (e.g., for local or European Union elections) to those under 18. Where these reforms have been implemented, studies generally show strong youth turnout and engagement.

Yes. Several jurisdictions in Maryland—including Takoma Park, Hyattsville, Greenbelt, and Riverdale Park—allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections, as does Brattleboro, Vermont. Newark, New Jersey and Oakland and Berkeley, California recently decided to permit 16-year-olds to vote in school board elections.

Yes. In March 2021, 125 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of lowering the voting age to 16 for federal elections. While that vote fell short, it demonstrated significant congressional support for youth voting rights, and the measure was reintroduced in 2023. The growing success of local, state, and international efforts, combined with increasing recognition of young people's political engagement and capabilities, suggests federal reform is possible. Remember that the voting age was last changed through constitutional amendment in 1971—during a time of significant youth activism.

While lowering the voting age to sixteen is an important and achievable milestone that has proven successful in other countries, it shouldn't be seen as an end goal. Rather than settling for partial reform, we should pursue the most principled, fair, and societally beneficial approach: eliminating age-based voting restrictions entirely. The success of sixteen-year-old voting in countries like Austria, Argentina, and Brazil demonstrates that extending voting rights to young people strengthens democracy. However, as described in the answer to the question "What exact age should the voting age be lowered to?" the arguments for sixteen as a cutoff are weak. Millions of young people under the age of sixteen meet the basic competency standard we set for adult voters (which is implicated in cases where a court considers removing someone's right to vote) and all youth have a powerful stake in political decisions. The ideal approach is to move away from blanket age restrictions altogether and toward a system where young people can vote as soon as they express interest and ability, with parents acting as proxies for very young children until they are ready to take over voting themselves. We may be the first country to pursue this path, but America has long prided itself on being a leader in democracy and this is the best way to achieve the defining principle of "one person, one vote."

Research shows that young people hold diverse political views and tend to be less rigidly partisan than older voters, who are less willing to change their positions based on new evidence. While young people often prioritize long-term issues like climate change, education funding, and economic mobility, they don't vote as a monolithic block. Their participation would likely increase focus on future-oriented policies and could help break through the current political gridlock in the United States.