海角大神

Voters in Brattleboro, Vt., will be asked this week to lower the voting age for local elections to 16, a move that some say could place the town on the cutting edge in a world where teenage political maturity may be vastly increasing thanks to online social interaction.

In Brattleboro on Tuesday the Selectboard will ask voters to decide on a ballot item that would , according to The Associated Press.聽

Vermont鈥檚 current voting age of 18 wouldn鈥檛 alter for state and federal elections. The proposal by Brattleboro resident Kurt Daims would lower the minimum age by two years for town elections.聽The Selectboard's chair said last October that such an聽amendment to the Town Charter .

Meanwhile, a group of preteens are working hard to get Georgia voters to lower the age of those seeking office from 21 to 18, and the website Debate.org is on lowering the voting age to 16 nationally.

would reduce the age at which a citizen could run for public office from 21 to 18.

CJ Pearson, age 12, is the executive director of (YGG), a darling of conservative media, and listed as a "public figure" on his page.

鈥淗ere at YGG, we encourage young people of all political backgrounds to become involved in our government, support young candidates who decide to run for office, and also fight for solutions to the issues facing young people across the entire state of Georgia,鈥� a statement on the YGG website reads. 鈥淥ur organization will lead voter registration drives, write legislation, and recruit young candidates to seek office to ensure young people have a voice in our government.鈥�

A study in Austria examined the differences in political interest of 16- and 17-year-old Austrians before and after the country lowered the voting age to 16 in 2008. Published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Youth Studies,聽 suggests that with enfranchisement comes increased interest in politics.

鈥淵oung people are said to be uninterested in politics. This lack of political interest among adolescents has been used as an argument against lowering the voting age. But why should someone be interested in politics if he or she is not eligible to vote,鈥� the study asked. 鈥淲e observe that political interest of 16- and 17-year-olds was higher after lowering the voting age鈥� In the specific societal and situational context of Austria, the development of political interest among young people seems to be associated with the 鈥榣ife event鈥� of enfranchisement.鈥�

Of course, interest is not the same thing as maturity. An earlier study performed in the US titled, by Tak Wing Chan and Matthew Clayton, rejected the proposal to lower voting rights to age 16.

鈥淭he key issue, we claim, is the political maturity of young people,鈥� the study by Mr. Chan and Mr. Clayton states. 鈥淒rawing on empirical data collected in nationally representative surveys, we argue that the weight of such evidence suggests that young people are, to a significant degree, politically less mature than older people, and that the voting age should not be lowered to sixteen.鈥�

But teens' apparent lack of political maturity could change, thanks to technology.聽Norfolk State University biologist聽Arthur Bowman studies neuroplasticity, that is, the聽capacity聽of the brain to reorganize its neural connections over time. Dr. Bowman, who is the former聽president of the , says he thinks that the internet and cloud-based information access has changed the landscape making much of the research inapplicable to today鈥檚 tech-savvy, connected youth.

鈥淥lder research on neural connections and maturity needs to be looked at again in light of today鈥檚 social communication, and the fact that our youth are so much more plugged in than their older counterparts has really shifted the dynamics of this kind of debate about intellectual maturity,鈥� Bowman says. 鈥淪ocial communities online are driving youth to learn more and know more about the real world. This forms new neural connections and may promote dendrite growth we don鈥檛 see in those who are less socially engaged.鈥�

Conversely, a Change.org petition,聽聽failed spectacularly to gain traction 鈥� gaining just 17 of the 1,000 votes needed to become viable via the site鈥檚 requirements, and was closed.

Asked if he believes there should be a maximum voting age established, Bowman laughed, saying, 鈥淚鈥檓 sure not going to say that. However, it would be the corollary question to be asking given that so many older voters are disconnected socially, politically and don鈥檛 take advantage of the social media and online political discussions that are currently affecting the world in the same way younger people do today.鈥�