GOP Contender Vivek Ramaswamy Thinks 18 Is Too Young to Vote

If you're cool with sending an 18 year old to battle, you should be cool with letting them vote
- Also can we please just let them have a beer, too?
  
  If I'm going to be forced to die in a desert for some rich dude profit margin I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want
- No no, if we let them vote they might vote for people who want to not send 18 year olds to war
- Service guarantees citizenship.
  
  **I would like to know more. **

10 is old enough to be a mom.
16 is old enough to fall into a meat vat.
18 is old enough to give them a rifle.
- Old enough to raise a whole ass human, slaughter edible living things, slaughter edible flying living things... but not old enough to decide what changes affect your community.
  Wow.
- 18 is old enough to decide to owe 200k on an education
- 18 is old enough to give them a rifle.
  Actually 17 with parental consent.
- 12 is old enough to enter the workforce without a permit or parental consent.
- I did hunter safety when I was 12 in Wisconsin.
  
  What else is there to do in Wisconsin though? Eat cheese? Tip over the cows? Disappear on lake Michigan or Superior?
- I actually don't think most of our society is qualified to vote.
  Voter rights should be determined by whether or not you know anything about what you're voting for, not based on your age. People should have to pass a test every year.
  
  The problem with this line of thinking is who would set the standard for the test? The current controlling power would skew things so only their supporters are now qualified to vote. In order to have a free and fair election every citizen needs the right to vote, otherwise we might as well just go back to the days that only white male landowners get to vote.

Man, the GOP just loves making the core tenet of Democracy inaccessible to anyone and everyone who isn’t rich and white.
- and OLD
- Let's be honest: if youth these days were inclined toward the right, Republican contenders would be fighting to 'defend' youths' right to vote from non-existent left-wing 'threats'.
  
  Shit, they'd be fighting to lower it to 16.
- I wish someone would propose limiting voting to people who’ve passed a citizenship test.
  I guarantee these yokel conservatives would think it’s a great idea to further marginalize people but I guarantee most of their electorate couldn’t pass a citizenship test lol

I'd rather go the other way and restrict voting to folks under 70. At least 18 year olds are going to have to live with the consequences.
- Disagree. I understand where you're coming from but it's short sighted to write off everyone over 70.
  
  I understand where you're coming from
  Not if you thought I was in any way serious.

This demographic I'm not popular with shouldn't be allowed to vote
Sounds like the terrorist GOP

The party of forced birth for child rape victims says what?

Let’s call this what it is: a call to repeal the 26th amendment

Misleading headline. What it should say is:
GOP Contender Vivek Ramaswamy Thinks Voting is A Privilege to be Earned
- And that is far, far scarier.

- Funny, the older I get the more progressive I get. Same for most of the people I know (I'm a millennial). It used to be you got more conservative as you got older but i think the consensus now is you get more conservative the richer you get and well, my generation isn't getting richer. I think we all just realize how easy it would be to pay the bill if we would just tax the rich.
  
  the 'freebies and handouts' are a miniscule portion of government revenue and expenses.

- Yeah, while I don't want to restrict anyone's voting, any logic against younger people voting is not nearly as strong as logic against older people voting. It's not just that they won't be a part of the world for as long (that said, it's entirely possible a 70 year old gets another 2 decades, so I don't think that's necessarily compelling reasoning). Mental decline is also an issue and arguably more relevant.
  The alt right doesn't like young voters because they claim they're too immature. But senility is very similar on the opposite end of the spectrum. Senile voters can be simply disconnected from reality and thus unable to make good choices.
  That said, you can't just draw an age limit and expect that to cover senility, since one person can be 65 and senile while another is 90 and of sound mind. So I don't think we should be restricting voting on either side of the age range (though we should let people as young as 16 vote -- we already trust them to do dangerous things like drive).

Yeah, well I feel 37 is too young to run for president. Maybe he should pause his campaign.
- Anyone over the age of retirement shouldn't be able to run for any publ office.

The GOP is too corrupt to breathe our air.

I saw that interview where said democrats are genetically different than republicans, so fuck him.
- Wait, what?
- Can you link?
- Maybe a brown guy in a party of racists shouldn't be bringing up genetics. Sounds like the sort of thing they'd use against him.

Can go die in a war at 18, but can't buy a gun until you're 21
Can't drink beer until you're 21, but can vote in general elections at 18
We need to just pick one and go with it, either 18 or 21
- I was in a US history class in high school when the teacher said that the drinking age used to be 18, and the voting age used to be 21, but they switched places. He then asked "Why?" And started calling on random students.
  When I got picked, my answer was "Fewer drunk voters?"
  
  But more uneducated voters

Wasn't there this whole defining thing for America? Something about taxation without representation, right? So the 18 year olds have to pay taxes on the wages they earn by working and therefore should be able to vote. The retired, however...
- The idea that the right to vote is tied to your tax contributions is very flawed.
  Paying taxes without the right to vote is absolutely ridiculous (so either link the right to vote to the age you're allowed to work, or tax exempt any work done under the voting age), but the inverse is ridiculous as well. People, above the voting age, that don't pay any taxes for whatever reason, should not have their voting rights stripped. This reasoning gets dangerously close to a plural voting system, where you get multiple votes if you're rich enough.
  If you want to disenfranchise retired people, use some other reasoning (like decline in cognitive abilities), not because they are no longer actively paying taxes.
  Note that I am not in favour of disenfranchising anyone. Keep the lower limit for voting age, or even reduce it, and no upper limit. Also make voting as accessible as possible.
  
  Alas, I'll have to learn to indicate the right level of cynicism more explicitly on here.
  As cynical but slightly more in earnest: if voting rights were only given to those who can prove basic reasoning abilities, it might actually make a difference. Since there is no reliable way to prevent authorities from abusing such a criterium, I see no other option than to have no restrictions on any generic criterium. Perhapa a voting obligation would be more effective.
- Students - all non-wage-earners - shouldn't be able to vote by your logic?
  Plenty of high schoolers and college students have jobs. Many before the age of 18.
  
  Students - all non-wage-earners - shouldn't be able to vote by your logic?
  I don't know how you could possibly derive that conclusion from what they said, unless you lack a very basic understanding of how to interpret logical statements.

Coming from the guy who never voted until he was 30. Who has never had any experience in politics at all...

Ramaswamy ding-dong.
If you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to vote. Period.

Whoever this guy is

I kind of agree. 16 is way too young to legally drive, 18 is way too young to be able to join the military, 60-whatever is way too old for retirement, etc.
- In a perfect world, I would agree. But in this Mephisto timeline, we gotta work with what we got.
  
  Shit, even Mephisto would be like "Y'all too fucked up for me. I'mma bounce."

He likely doesn' he just know what the GOP wants to hear.

Then make sure they pay zero taxes of any kind please.

This person doesn't think anything, he is paid to parrot statements for Supreme Court Justice owning billionaires.
"...gonna be on the trail... See you out the trail!"

the choices some folks make I'm not sure if 30 is too young to vote
- Should anyone at all be allowed to vote is what I'm thinking...
  
  In a perfect world society wouldn't let anyone reach adulthood without a well rounded education to bolster them against the kind of fear based tricks the Republicans use. This is why the Republicans have been trying to dismantle public education every chance they get and cut assistance programs. Keep the people dumb, poor, and tired and they're easier to manipulate.

- I agree. We shouldn't be able to vote / work / or pay taxes until we are 40. We are just so immature. We should focus on learning new methods to destroy the environment and housing market before we are allowed to make decisions.