What should the voting age be?

[a completely inoffensive name]

And why?

I was prompted to make this topic by seeing it suggested that the voting age be raised, but interestingly when I googled it all I got was suggestions that it be lowered to 16!?

The only things I recall being said about it were along the lines of "if you can drink...if you can drive...join the army...at 18, then you can vote" which seems to miss the point (there's no draft right now...and draft age could be changed as well).

How about 25, since the brain doesn't finish maturing until the mid twenties (though I don't know the age exactly)? Isn't it better for voters to have more education and life experience, to be full adults in other words? And today we don't expect people to be grown up at 18 or even 21.

It's all very imprecise on what makes you "ready" to vote. Honestly, it really is all a bunch of **** on how people "determine" their views on what makes someone ready to be a voter. To start with, if you can't vote, then you don't have the same rights as everyone else even though you live in the same society as them. Children are an exception because they do not interact within society to the extent that is required for them to need the rights that they don't have. It's all school, home and friends houses, with a few hangout spots. College is when you need to give the vote to them because they are now out and about fully interacting in society getting jobs and driving around and such. The fact that many kids have jobs and drivers licenses at 16 is why people suggest lowering it to 16 because those people are fully interacting with society.

Secondly, to raise it to 25 for "life experience" or because "the brain is finished developing" is completely moronic. Life experience is dependent on how you live your life and completely subjective, just because you have lived to 25 doesn't mean you know any more then when you were 18. Not every elder is wise and I can prove that. On the subject of using science to further a political goal, I say if we don't allow people under 25 to vote because their brains arn't ready yet, then let's just cut off voting to everyone 80 and above as well since if we are so eager to generalize all young people below 25 as under developed mentally we need to continue this to its logical conclusion and generalize that everyone 80 and above is probably suffering from some form of dementia or decline in brain activity/function. So no vote to grandma because she can't remember when was the last time she went to the store.

Thirdly, the statement "today we don't expect people to be grown up at 18 or even 21" is not relevant because society's "views" should not be determining who gets rights and who doesn't, that's a tyranny of the majority, otherwise all the old people might as well vote to have anyone under 50 to be cut off from voting rights. Or maybe it was ok for southern society in the 1950s to segregate because it was their social consensus that blacks were inferior.

My brother has been working at the polling place at my hometown's library every election he can for the past 4 years now and after hearing about the people he has dealt with I am convinced that the voting age should be as low as possible because the only thing more backward then seeing a college aged person walk in a vote straight democrat because "obama is cool and he will change things" is seeing a 65 year old man with more then 30 elections under his belt (lol "life experience") walk in and vote straight republican because there is obviously no nuance to the world, obama is socialist and this country is going to collapse into the soviet union in 5 years tops if WE DONT TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY!

So with that said it becomes obvious that age is just a number and your ability to function as a rational and beneficial citizen depends on whether or not you are a rational human being not on how many years you have been on this Earth.