Dear Culver City: No on Measure YV and 16-year-olds voting

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By Steve Siegel

The reason I do not believe children should vote is that I do not want kids to be the focal point of advertising, messaging, cajoling, badgering, and yep, even begging for their votes. They are too young for that. It is unseemly as a concept and could be even worse in actuality. 

If kids can vote, it seems likely that attempts to persuade children will be institutionalized, and the messaging could start very young. This could mean veritable industries being created to convince children about political issues at an age when kids are sometimes overly impressionable. If the “convincing” migrates to “catering,” we’ve moved further in the wrong direction.

I am both a parent of teens who have gone through the CC school system and I work in advertising. I believe it will be a bad idea to have professionals thinking of ways to convince kids to make adult decisions.

We’ve heard the argument that kids should get involved in issues. There are plenty of ways to do that without putting them in direct discussions with adults who are trying to get something from them: a vote. And there are other reasons why kids shouldn't vote, including privacy concerns with registered voter info, division at school, and more.

I suggest using the simple parenting maxim: “What is best for the kids?” Kids are busy enough with school, extracurriculars, family, college applications and prep, etc. They don’t need more pressure and it’s unlikely that we need this experiment. If kids could vote, you could also expect efforts to convince them to go well beyond what you think might happen - it is better to stop this before it gets going.

In my opinion, what is best for children is to keep them away from forces attempting to use them for political gain

Steve Siegal has lived in Culver City for 10+ years, and is an author, advertising writer, and parent of recent Culver City High School graduates.