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Paths to Youth Voting

There are multiple routes to expanding youth voting rights. Minor Power favors ageless voting, with parents or legal guardians exercising a proxy until a minor asserts their right to act independently by registering to vote, but we support other approaches that move us toward greater democratic inclusion. Understanding that different strategies may be more feasible in different contexts and that achieving transformational change will require a broad coalition working on multiple fronts, we encourage robust debate and welcome diverse perspectives on extending voting rights to minors. To orient yourself in the youth voting rights landscape, check out eight key approaches to youth enfranchisement below.

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Lowering the Voting Age ★ Ageless Voting with Parental Proxy Parental Proxy Voting Young Adult Proxy Voting Weighted Voting Issue-Specific Voting Election-Specific Voting Competency-Based Voting

Lowering the Voting Age

This approach would reduce the minimum voting age to a specified threshold, most commonly 16 years old, although some advocates favor setting the benchmark at a lower age (e.g., 14 or 12) or basing it on class year (e.g., permitting all high schoolers to vote). Following the model of countries like Austria and Brazil, in its pure form, this enfranchisement path would provide full voting rights to young people once they reached the new threshold. This represents the most widely tested path internationally, with evidence from multiple countries showing that 16- and 17-year-olds can be successfully added to the electorate: in general, they turn out for elections, make informed voting decisions, and act independently, in line with other voters. The change could be implemented at various levels of government, from local to state to federal.

Positives

  • Clear precedent from other countries showing successful realization
  • Straightforward to implement within existing electoral systems
  • Builds on historical milestone of amending the U.S. Constitution to lower voting age to 18
  • Aligns with research showing 16-year-olds are indistinguishable from average adults when it comes to voting-relevant cognition
  • 16 corresponds to the minimum driving age in many states
  • Creates natural opportunity for civic education in high schools
  • Allows young people to register and "learn the ropes" at a moment of stability

Negatives

  • Maintains an arbitrary age cutoff
  • Excludes many capable and interested young people below the new threshold
  • Wrongly implies that the current capacity standard for voting is set at the level of the average adult
  • Stigmatizes youth under the age threshold
  • May reduce pressure for more comprehensive reform
  • Does not address representation of younger children

★ Ageless Voting with Parental Proxy

This approach would eliminate all age restrictions on voting, ensuring representation for every citizen from birth. Parents or guardians would exercise proxy votes for very young children until those children asserted their right to vote independently by the simple act of registering. The proxy would be legally obligated to vote in the child's best interests and consult with the child as appropriate. Click here to learn more about why Minor Power favors this approach.

Positives

  • Truly realizes "one person, one vote" principle
  • Ensures all citizens have representation for their whole life
  • Allows flexible transition to independent voting based on individual readiness and desire
  • Allocates a fair proportion of political power to families with children
  • Recognizes the strong alignment of interests between parents and their children in the earliest years of life
  • Creates incentives for civic education from an early age
  • Relies on existing duties (e.g., parents are already tasked with acting in their children's best interests)

Negatives

  • More complex to implement and administer than lowering the voting age
  • Potential for parents to vote their own interests rather than children's
  • Could be seen as expanding parental rights rather than children's rights
  • Could create conflicts between some children and parents

Parental Proxy Voting

Under this system, parents or guardians would receive additional votes based on the number of minor children in their care, without provision for children to take independent control before reaching current voting age. This differs from ageless voting with parental proxy in that it does not envision children ever taking control of their vote before 18, treating the additional votes as belonging to the parents rather than the children.

Positives

  • Increases representation of families with children
  • Simple to implement within existing systems
  • Could build support among parents
  • Addresses underrepresentation of children's interests
  • May face less political resistance than direct youth voting

Negatives

  • Fails to address divergence of interests between many children and parents, particularly in adolescence
  • Does not empower young people directly
  • May reinforce parental control over children
  • Could create inequalities between families
  • Doesn't develop youth civic engagement

Young Adult Proxy Voting

Children’s votes would be allocated to eligible young adults—for example, existing voters between the ages of 18 and 29—on a wholesale basis at the level of a small geographic area. For instance, in a given Census block group, if there were 200 minors and 100 voters under the age of 30, each voter under 30 would cast three total votes to reflect their own vote and two votes on behalf of the local children whose preferences they represent. (A variation of young adult proxy voting would task particular young adults—for example, a sibling, cousin, or mentor—with acting as a proxy for a particular child, much like parental proxy voting.)

Positives

  • Eliminates complex administrative challenges by using wholesale vote allocation rather than matching specific parents and guardians to specific children
  • May better reflect youth perspectives and interests than parental proxy voting, given that young adults and children may be more politically aligned and similarly situated than parents and children
  • Avoids difficult "special cases" like orphaned children, foster care situations, or custody disputes that complicate parental proxy systems
  • Builds connections between minors and young adults
  • Avoids concerns about incapacity and inexperience entailed in lowering or eliminating the voting age

Negatives

  • Ignores that parents may be the best proxies for infants and young children, given the alignment of interests on key issues like care leave, school quality, and affordable healthcare
  • Creates an unprecedented concentration of political power in the hands of the least experienced voters, who would become the most powerful voting bloc in America
  • Young adults tend to have the lowest voter turnout rates of any eligible age group, potentially reducing the effective representation of children's preferences
  • Young adults as a group lack the deep personal knowledge of specific children's circumstances, needs, and preferences that parents possess
  • The minors likely to be most aligned with young adults—teens—are the minors with the greatest capacity, knowledge, and experience to vote for themselves

Weighted Voting

This approach would implement a system where voting power increases gradually with age, starting with partial votes for younger teens that build to full voting rights. For example, 14-year-olds might receive a quarter vote, 15-year-olds a half vote, and 16-year-olds a three-quarter vote, before receiving full voting rights at 17 or 18.

Positives

  • Recognizes gradual development
  • May be more politically palatable
  • Allows early participation
  • Creates pathway to full rights
  • Could encourage civic education

Negatives

  • Violates equal protection principles
  • Complex to implement
  • Creates new arbitrary distinctions
  • Perpetuates stigmatization of and discrimination against youth
  • Recalls ugly history of granting partial legal personhood

Issue-Specific Voting

This path would allow young people to vote on matters directly affecting them, such as school board elections, education funding measures, or climate policy, while maintaining age restrictions for other issues. Several jurisdictions have already implemented this approach for school board elections.

Positives

  • Focuses on youth-relevant issues
  • More politically feasible
  • Demonstrates youth voting capacity
  • Builds experience gradually
  • Addresses specific youth concerns

Negatives

  • Creates two-tiered citizenship
  • Difficult to determine which issues qualify
  • Complex to administer
  • May reduce pressure for full voting rights
  • Reinforces notion that youth only care about or are only affected by certain issues

Election-Specific Voting

This approach permits youth voting in certain elections (typically local) while maintaining existing age restrictions in others (state and federal). Several municipalities in the United States have successfully implemented this model, allowing those 16 and older to vote in local elections while maintaining standard age restrictions for state and federal races.

Positives

  • Allows for local experimentation
  • Creates evidence base for broader reform
  • More politically achievable
  • Builds youth voting experience
  • Can demonstrate successful implementation

Negatives

  • Creates confusing patchwork of rights
  • Limited impact on major policy decisions
  • Voter enthusiasm for local elections tends to be lower
  • Administrative challenges
  • May satisfy opponents of comprehensive reform
  • Could stall momentum for national change

Competency-Based Voting

This reform would replace age restrictions with eligibility criteria based on civic knowledge, voting process understanding, or other measurable standards. Any person who could demonstrate sufficient understanding would be permitted to vote, regardless of age.

Positives

  • Focuses on actual capacity rather than age
  • Encourages civic education
  • Treats youth voters and adult voters equally
  • Rewards voter preparation, competency, and knowledge

Negatives

  • Risk of discriminatory implementation
  • Recalls literacy and other tests historically used to exclude Black and other voters
  • Could create new barriers to voting
  • Could disenfranchise many existing voters
  • Administrative challenges
  • May face legal challenges

Strategic Approach

The most effective strategy for youth enfranchisement may be to advance on several fronts while remaining focused on the ultimate goal of ensuring all citizens have a meaningful voice in our democracy.

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Why Minor Power Favors Ageless Voting

While Minor Power supports multiple paths to expanding youth voting rights, we believe that ageless voting with parental proxy represents the best long-term solution. 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 commit ourselves to pursuing the most principled, fair, and societally beneficial approach: eliminating age-based voting restrictions entirely.

Ageless voting is most consistent with core democratic principles, ensuring that every citizen has representation from birth while providing flexibility for young people to take control of their vote when ready. Unlike other reforms that maintain arbitrary age distinctions or create complex administrative systems, ageless voting with parental proxy offers a clean and comprehensive solution that truly realizes the ideal of "one person, one vote."

For those concerned that proxy voting might result in parents voting their own interests rather than their children's, it's important to understand that parents and guardians are already legally required—and explicitly trusted by courts—to act in their children's best interests in numerous contexts. We also regularly rely on proxies to act faithfully in matters with far graver consequences, such as medical decision-making or high-stakes business dealings. In addition, parents tend to care deeply about their children and their futures, and parents' and young children's interests are typically closely aligned, particularly in the early years of life (before children might begin exercising their right to vote independently). Even parents acting primarily out of self-interest would likely support policies benefiting their young children—from paid family leave to high-quality universal pre-K. Indeed, a key reason that we lack many child-friendly policies in the United States is that there is currently no representation for the interests of millions of babies and toddlers in our democracy.

But ageless voting also reflects the reality that as young people get older, they develop their own identities, beliefs, and values separate from their parents. The best proxy system is one that is limited to situations of necessity: all infants need voting proxies, but most 14-year-olds do not. Once a young person feels ready, they should cast their own vote. Allowing the act of registering to serve as our capacity benchmark acknowledges that we should not hold young people to a different standard than we use for all other voters.

While we may be the first country to pursue this path, America has long prided itself on being a leader in democracy. This is the logical endpoint of our national project.