Everyone should be allowed to vote. Tiny children will almost always spoil the ballot but if there's a 4-year-old who can validly fill out a ballot (on their own, of course; can't have someone else in the ballot box with them) their vote should count.https://twitter.com/atrembath/status/1163920064053071872 …
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I am actually completely serious about this. Our two-year-old watched the debates with us and wanted an explanation of voting. The voting station is at our nearby park. He was all excited to go there and vote for the person he thought should be the president.
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I wish I could have told him "you have to get better at reading, and learn about who the candidates are so you can vote well", instead of "oh, that's not allowed, and won't be allowed for the next sixteen years".
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Does he have good political opinions? No, he has stupid ones. So do most of my fellow Americans...and yet I want them to have the right to vote anyway, and I want them to exercise it, because I am a principled believer in democracy.
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Replying to @KelseyTuoc
can you say more on this take? My intuition is that there are gradients of stupid that separate a 2 year old from a stupid adult but i'm really curious on the principle here
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Replying to @justin_portela
I don't think that democracy is good because voters have good values or reliably vote for their values. (They don't seem to.) I do think voters tend to vote out politicians if their lives got worse, and that this creates good incentives; kids probably do worse at that.
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Replying to @KelseyTuoc @justin_portela
But I also think that kids (not two-year-olds, but also all two-year-olds will spoil a ballot) are more capable than we tend to assume. And they're more capable when we create space for them to demonstrate capability.
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Replying to @KelseyTuoc @justin_portela
And a world where they vote regularly will be a world where they develop more voting-relevant capabilities, and are better citizens by the time they're adults. Plus, they'll literally have practice at voting. Lots of young adults don't vote because it's not a habit.
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Replying to @KelseyTuoc @justin_portela
Voting is actually weird and complicated and a bit of a hassle, and young adults are inexperienced with navigating bureaucracy. If they've been doing it their whole life, they'll know how. They'll feel competent to do it. They'll think of it as something you get better at.
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Replying to @KelseyTuoc @justin_portela
You could give them a kids' vote for some ceremonial position, seems like a way to teach the habit without any risky side effects like someone winning a few million votes by promising to make chocolate free...
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voting turns you into a worse person because it causes you to participate in the current political culture
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