Matthew Yglesias: Let Seven Year Olds Vote

In a display punishing stupidity that should make people cringe in embarrassment on his behalf, Matthew Yglesias lobbies to give the right to vote to small children.

I say let any American citizen vote in any American election he or she wants to.

Objections to this usually take the form of imagining a highly disciplined party of seven year-olds reliably delivering bloc votes to whichever candidate credibly promises endless kindergarten. If you think for five minutes about the practical problems of political organizing, and then for five minutes more about the practical problems of getting kids to do anything I think you’ll see quickly that this is a misguided worry. Realistically, voter turnout in the United States is not particularly high to begin with. Older teens and twentysomethings are already disproportionately unlikely to vote. If we extended the vote to more children, my guess is that relatively few of them would exercise it. But those who did would come from an unusually dedicated and informed sub-set of American teenagers. Meanwhile, if seven year-olds somehow do manage to organize themselves into an effective political lobby, I say more power to them.

There’s a very obvious reason that we don’t let children vote: They’re extremely ignorant. To most Americans, that’s a bug, but to liberals like Yglesias, it’s a feature.

In all honesty, given the current level of knowledge of most young Americans, we’d probably be better off as a country if we moved the voting age to about 30. Of course, that’s not practical because if we’re going to declare people to be adults at 18, then they need to be allowed to take on adult responsibilities — like voting.

To suggest something as ridiculous as letting children vote, you either have to be completely bereft of all common sense or have some malice in your soul. Both are probably true in this case.

The only reason liberals EVER push to get more people to vote, whether it’s felons or small children, is because they believe they’ll vote their way — and small children are a natural voting block for liberals.

Think about it.

1) They’re poor judges of character and can’t tell when someone’s lying.

2) They’re completely ignorant of how the world works.

3) They’re easy to bribe.

What sort of malcontent sits around, rubbing his hands together like Snidely Whiplash, salivating over the idea of convincing seven year olds to vote for Barney Frank? You’ve got to have something fundamentally wrong with you as a human being to even suggest something like this.

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