How come a working 16-year-old pays taxes but is not able to vote? No Taxation Without Representation. It was James Otis who said in the wake of the American Revolution, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” That’s one of this country’s founding principles, one that I and so many other Americans hold to be just. And…
As if America didn’t already have an appalling record on youth rights, the Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to raise the voting age to 25 unless 18 to 24-year-olds serve in the military or pass a civics test. Really, Vivek? When there’s a growing movement to lower the voting age to 16 to give…
NYRA has just secured yet another voting age endorsement from Young Democrats of America, the latest of a long string of organizations that have joined the movement! YDA is the official youth arm of the Democratic Party. Gaining their support has taken over a year and a half of going back-and-forth with YDA officials before…
She’s a 16-year-old single mother struggling to manage school and pay bills. He’s 17 and juggling two full-time jobs. She is also 17 and was born with a disability that requires a dependence on the government for access to medicine. They are 16 and attend a high school in a district that is in consideration…
NYRA has just secured yet another voting age endorsement from the High School Democrats of America! HSDA is the fourth Democratic Party branch to endorse lowering the voting age to 16, following the Fairfax County and Westmoreland County Democrats in Virginia, also the work of NYRA, and the College Democrats of Massachusetts. HSDA is the…
Allegedly, America is a country founded on democracy, but not all Americans are given the ability to participate in the democratic process. For instance, in many states, inmates and ex-felons are barred from the voting booths. Motivated to further the long running trend of the enfranchisement of more and more groups of Americans, many organizations…
Next month brings with it another campaign for president, and that means it is time for NYRA to once again look into the issue of campaign contributions from young people. This is an issue NYRA has followed since 2002 when the Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance bill was introduced that ultimately became the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act…
On Tuesday, March 5, the House of Representatives voted on a bill introduced by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) to lower the federal voting age to 16. In this historic vote, 126 representatives voted in favor of the bill, including a majority of House Democrats and Texas Republican Michael Burgess. Pressley’s bill, House Amendment 76 to…
Last November, I had the pleasure of meeting with Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) and her Judicial Counsel in November in her Washington office. Meng introduced a bill to lower the voting age last summer, so I set up a meeting to discuss how we could work together to move the bill forward. I talked about…
As a ten-year-old kid in Seattle, I was already interested in politics. My friends and I marched around the playground protesting the Iraq War, and I wrote letters to my representatives in the state legislature and Congress on issues I was passionate about. However, I quickly found that many of these elected officials and other…
