OPINION

Lowering The Voting Age Is Just Another Democrat Power Grab

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The Democrat Party’s push to lower the voting age is not designed to serve the interests of the American people — it’s a naked power grab that would only serve the interests of the Democrats.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, voters overwhelmingly oppose the Democrats’ call to reduce the voting age from 18 years old to 16 years old, with more than 74 percent of respondents rejecting the idea.

In fact, the survey found that only 17 percent of likely voters favor lowering the legal voting age, making it one of the most unpopular initiatives that the Democrats have pitched this year — and that’s really saying something.

As the Party has embraced an increasingly radical and socialist agenda, many other recent Democratic proposals have also run into the roadblock of public opinion.

According to a poll published late last month, for instance, more voters supported President Trump’s border wall than the Green New Deal that is projected to cost taxpayers $93 trillion. Likewise, a recent survey found that more than half of Americans now agree that the FBI’s Russia collusion probe is a “witch hunt” against the President, undermining Democrat calls for more follow-up investigations in the House.

Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, normally a shrewd and cynical political operator, seems to think there’s value in advocating such widely-despised proposals.

“I myself, personally — I’m not speaking for my caucus — I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school when they’re interested in all of this when they’re learning about government to be able to vote.”

Pelosi’s unusual choice of words is both revealing and disturbing — the real reason Democrats want to lower the voting age is that they believe they can “capture” the passions of impressionable high school students and turn them into lifelong liberals before they have a chance to develop the critical thinking skills and worldly knowledge that are the mortal enemies of the Democrats’ neo-socialist policy agenda.

Notice also that Pelosi takes great care to emphasize that she is speaking for herself, suggesting that she’s well aware that her party’s radical proposal won’t be terribly popular with the rest of the country, and is hoping to keep the issue from hanging like an albatross around the neck of the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2020.

Lowering the voting age to 16 was never a pitch to strengthen our constitutional republic or improve our political system — it was just another opportunistic effort to change the rules of the game in a way that would be beneficial to Democrats. 

According to the Harris Poll released earlier this month, Generation Z and Millenials are significantly more likely to support socialist policies than older generations, making them a crucial demographic for the unhinged radicals who have taken over the Democrat Party.

The push to let high school sophomores vote in national elections isn’t about encouraging civic engagement or strengthening the republic; it’s a last-ditch effort to find a source of voters who won’t immediately recoil from the Democrat Party’s self-destructive extremism.