Opinion: Ralph Nader thinks kids 1/5th his age should be able to vote

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Although the subject hasn’t exactly been a hot political issue yet as we skim through the 16th month of the current presidential election contest, Ralph Nader is proposing that even more teenagers should be legally eligible to vote -- those who are 16 and 17.

A perennial presidential candidate recently, Nader is the oldest guy running for the White House. He’s even older than that other one.

Nader is so old that when he was 16, this thing called television was just catching on. Diners Club was inventing the credit card. The average house cost $8,450, the average car $1,510 and the stuff to run it called gasoline cost 18 cents a gallon, which is about half today’s per-gallon tax.

There was no known connection, but when Nader was 16, China invaded Tibet; wait a minute, didn’t they just do that again?

When Nader was 16, President Truman sent U.S. troops to help the French fight Communists because it was important to defend a place soon to be known as Vietnam. And some unknown kid named ...

... James Dean was jitterbugging around a pop machine in Pepsi commercials.

That’s how old is Ralph Nader, who didn’t wear an earring when he was 16. But the onetime consumer advocate who’s usually railing against some -thing or -body is now speaking in favor of lowering the voting age again.

Nader notes that Austria lowered its voting age last year. And we all know what that means.

Nader was a vocal supporter of the 26th Amendment that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971. That was the year, if you remember, that Polish strikers demanded the resignation of Interior Minister Kazimierz Switala, who was replaced by Franciszek Szlachcic.

Anyway, today Nader says people who are 16 and may drive cars, pay taxes and even get married (though often not for long) ought to be able to vote in federal elections.

‘Sixteen year olds,’ he writes on his campaign website, ‘are likely to be more excited. They are studying and learning about the country and the world in high school. They’re still at home and can bring their discussions to their parents, who may turn out at the polls more as a result.’

He also thinks younger voters would force schools to be more conscientious about teaching civics.

Nader intends to make 16-year-old voters a major issue in his minor campaign. ‘I’ll be talking up the 16-year-old vote,’ he writes. ‘But it will only become a reality if a teenage political revolution makes it happen.’

So start the countdown clock right now.

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo Credits: Associated Press