After exiting the tax-happy Gilded
State, a fair number of its loopy citizens who could no longer afford
skyrocketing housing prices and crowded freeways migrated to nearby Oregon, a
state that competes with California for the honor of championing the most “progressive”
ideas in the nation -- e.g. assisted
suicide, legalized
weed, rent control, and banning
those thin plastic bags that
presumably constitute an existential threat to the planet.
Recently Oregon’s legislature
began touting a proposal similar to one the late California State Senator John
Vasconcellos floated in 2004. Back then Vasconcellos proposed giving partial votes to teenagers.
Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds would
receive quarter-votes while their sixteen- and seventeen-year-old siblings
would wield twice as much electoral clout. Oregon’s legislators, by contrast, are
considering a bill that would give a full 100% vote to sixteen-
and seventeen-year-olds while leaving younger kids disenfranchised, at least
for the moment.
Any honest political observer
knows why Democrats wish to drop the voting age to include individuals who can’t
join the military, own firearms, or enter into legal contracts. The reason is that emotional, easily
manipulated teenagers are overwhelmingly likely to vote for Democrats -- as is undoubtedly
the case with those “undocumented immigrants” that San Francisco now includes
in local elections. Rising in opposition
to the Oregon bill, the Senate Republican leader observed, “This is nothing
more than an attempt to expand the voter rolls to sway elections.” Omitted from
his statement were the words “toward Democrats.”
If Oregon passes this legislation,
it may be only a matter of time till its sponsors propose (bit by bit) constitutional
amendments that enfranchise, perhaps fractionally, all its citizens -- bills that
allow both grade-schoolers and toddlers the opportunity to participate in the
“democratic process” in both state and federal elections. The conservative view that
language-acquisition and continence-skills (to say nothing of I.D.) should be voting
prerequisites will doubtless be portrayed as a corrupt attempt to suppress the
vote by “ageist” opponents of full representation.
Furthermore, since a significant
number of high school graduates are already functionally illiterate, extending
voting rights to other literacy-challenged teens and pre-teens seems only
logical. Finally, providing diapered Democrats
some voice in government is warranted due to the all-but-certain belief that infants
have a scant twelve years to live if politicians don’t adopt AOC’s “Green New
Deal.” Surely those “most at risk” kids
deserve a voice in their own rapidly-diminishing futures as was made clear by the
tots who recently lectured California Senator Dianne Feinstein.
If one asks how pre- and
neo-bipeds are supposed to vote, one may argue that a government of “all the
people” must accommodate the developmental stages of all citizens by providing
height- and age-appropriate selection mechanisms. A ballot for two-year-olds, for example, could
show a scowling face shouting “Bad boy, bad girl!” for binary Republicans and a
cheerful nurturing figure labeled “Does baby X want candy?” for Democrats. Other creative symbols could be used for minor
party candidates. Greens might be
represented by Ansel Adams prints and foresty smells. Sour grapes, on the other hand, would provide
an appropriate scratch-and-sniff stand in for Starbucks spoiler Howard Schultz.
A one-tenth vote based on such
odio-visual cues would doubtless provide as accurate a reflection of toddler
"scentiment" as the butterfly ballot choices
made by those Palm Beach seniors who couldn’t tell the difference between Pat
Buchanan and Al Gore in the 2000 Bush-Gore Presidential election.
The last refuge of electoral
scoundrels, of course, is the intelligence argument. Elitists will claim that
children don’t know enough to vote responsibly. Yet literacy tests were outlawed decades ago. Surely the Ninth U. S. Circuit Court wouldn’t
hesitate to also declare intelligence and maturity unconstitutional standards
-- especially if its ruling aids opponents of President Trump.
The truth is that obstructionists
have always been against the expansion of voting rights -- to non-propertied
males, to blacks and women, to 18-year-olds. They always say that the new group isn’t
qualified and doesn’t know enough to responsibly exercise the franchise. To these doubting Thomases there’s an obvious
retort: “What’s knowledge got to do with it? If the adult voters of New York can elect the
likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, how could incontinent two-year-olds possibly
do worse?”
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in
Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?" is also available on Kindle
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