Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections
Recent decades have seen increasing concern over the fact that youth voting turnout is consistently lower than turnout among older generations. Several programs to increase the rates of voting among young people—such as MTV's "Rock the Vote" (founded in 1990) and the "Vote or Die" initiative (starting in 2012)—may have marginally increased turnouts of those between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote. However, the "Stanford Social Innovation Review" found no evidence of a decline in youth voter turnout. In fact, they argue that "Millennials are turning out at similar rates to the previous two generations when they face their first elections."
Training Wheels for Citizenship
The plan was criticized as promoting "representation without taxation." Republican Assemblyman Ray Haynes said, "There's a reason 14-year-olds and 16-year-olds don't vote. They are not adults. They are not mature enough. They are easily deceived by political charlatans." The argument that today's teenagers should be able to vote because they know more about the world than their predecessors was rebutted by a FrontPage Magazine editorial which stated, "Today’s internet-savvy 14-year-olds may have more data than did their peers 40 years ago, but they do not necessarily have any more wisdom, maturity, or life experience to immunize them against delusion, demagogues and deceivers." Republican State Senator Ross Johnson said, "To waste taxpayer money having children cast votes would be ridiculous at any time, but in the face of our current fiscal crisis, it's an obscenity." The historical basis for the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, was that 18-year-olds were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War; the argument was made that no such compelling reason exists for lowering the voting age to 14 or 16.