Should 16 Be The ​“New 18”?

As students took their quest to lower the voting age to 16 to City Hall, they heard concerns about a slippery slope. What’s next: 15-year-old voters? asked an opponent from the Leauge of Women Voters.

That questions came from Tina Doyle, president of the League of Women Voters of New Haven. She joined with Alderwoman Arlene DePino at a Wednesday night City Hall hearing to oppose an effort to lower the voting age to 16.

Thanks to the efforts of a group of students at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, the Board of Aldermen’s Youth Services Committee Wednesday took up a proposal that would place a referendum on the November ballot urging the state to lower the voting age from 18 to 16. After listening to testimony from the students and others, the committee voted to pass the item along to the full Board of Alderman for a vote at its meeting next Tuesday. Of the 30 aldermen, 20 will have to support the measure for the referendum vote to take place.

For Leah Gimbel (pictured) the committee vote signaled that she was finally being heard. ​“A lot of people came and showed support,” Gimbel, who graduated from high school in the spring, said after the vote. ​“We had an open floor for a discussion. That’s what we were hoping for.”

Gimbel told the committee she decided to work to lower the voting age when her efforts at educational reform fell on deaf ears. She had petitioned. She had protested. But nothing worked.

Then her constitutional law teacher at Co-op, a Yale law student, decided the class should get involved in real-life advocacy. The teacher, Nicolas Riley, casually tossed out lowering the voting age as one among many causes the students could consider. Gimbel, who had come to believe that her lack of voting power had left her powerless, seized on that idea.

After more class discussion, the New18 organization was born. The student advocacy group would lobby for dropping the state’s voting age to 16, making 16 ​“the new 18.” (Check out the New18 website.)

The students prepared petitions, held press conferences, published editorials, designed a poster, staged a rally, and met with (a few) elected officials.

They persuaded Youth Committee Chair Alderwoman Bitsie Clark and State Rep. Roland Lemar to sponsor legislation calling for a referendum on the issue.

On Wednesday night, Clark, who represents downtown, was one of five aldermen to support sending the issue to the full Board of Aldermen. The others were: the Hill’s Jacqueline James-Evans, Westville’s Tom Lehtonen, Fair Haven Heights’ Maureen O’Sullivan-Best, and Edgewood’s Marcus Paca.

Democracy being democracy, of course, not everyone supported the measure. Alderwoman Arlene DePino, who represents Morris Cove and is the only Republican on the board, voted against sending the issue to the full board.

“I don’t think 16-year-olds have the maturity level to vote,” she said. ​“You have got to go up the ladder one rung at a time.”

DePino had earlier objected to a ​“favorable discharge,” meaning sending the issue to the full board with a favorable recommendation. Paca, who had made the motion, then asked for a ​“plain discharge,” or sending the issue to the full board without any recommendation. That’s what the committee did. 

The New18 campaign still has a long way to go. Even if the aldermen agree next week to place the referendum on the ballot, voters would need to approve it, which they probably won’t, said Riley, pictured, the former Co-op law teacher who is now a voting rights lawyer in Brooklyn. And even if the voters approve the referendum, the ballot measure simply requests that the state enact legislation lowering the voting age — it doesn’t require it.

Based on past performance, the legislature is unlikely to act. ​“Sixteen- and 17-year-olds were emailing state representatives and being totally ignored,” Riley said. ​“We suspect it’s because we couldn’t participate in elections.”

Indeed, the response of the state legislators both underlines what the students are fighting for and illustrates how hard it will be to achieve. ​“If we could go directly to the state legislature, if they would have been more responsive to us, that’s the route we would have gone,” Riley said. ​“The referendum happens to be the tool that is available to us.”

Still, Wednesday night’s vote was a victory for a simple reason: the students were listened to.

The public hearing began with three current high school students and recent graduate Gimbel testifying. Riley also spoke, as did a current Co-op teacher and Yale law student, Jamil Jivan, and a Northeastern University law student, Daniel Widrew, who is involved with a national youth rights organization.

The students made positive arguments for allowing 16-year-olds to vote and fended off negative ones.

The thrust of their argument was that it’s better to get people in the habit of voting when they’re younger and still living at home.

The students repeated what has become something of a mantra for the campaign: at age 16, students are often taking mandatory civics class but they can’t act on what they’re learning. ​“It would be like sending a 14-year-old to driving school when they can’t drive until they’re 16,” Carlee Carvako, a Co-op high senior, said.

It would be better to let them vote and get them in the habit of casting a ballot. ​“Political scientists have said early voters are voters for life,” Carvako pointed out.

One of the political scientists pushing a lower voting age is Peter Levine, director of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, who happened to have been an intern with the Board of Aldermen in 1988. During his testimony, Riley read a statement from Levine. ​“Voting is habitual behavior,” Levine wrote. It’s easier to get young people into the habit when they’re living at home with adults who will remind them to vote rather than away at college ​“living with other people who have never voted before.”

During her testimony, Gimbel pointed out another problem with waiting until 18 to cast a first vote. Gimbel, who’s now 18, said she will be be moving to Illinois to attend the University of Chicago. That means her first vote will take place in a city she barely knows. ​“I don’t know the political system. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know its problems,” Gimbel told the committee. It’s better to ​“get grounded in voting” in the community in which you grew up, she said.

Seth Poole, program director of Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, who testified in favor of the initiative, said youth participation in voting was particularly important in New Haven because of the city resources devoted to education.

“Half of the city budget is allocated to young people in the form of education,” Poole said, ​“It’s only fitting to allow them to have some say.”

The students and their supporters also played defense.

Co-op senior Carvako took exception to the idea that 16- and 17-year-olds were not intelligent enough to vote.

“The last time there was an intelligence test used for voting it was used to discriminate against women and people of color,” Carvako said. She also pointed out that lots of adults, including some running for president this year, have misstated parts of the Constitution.

DePino crystallized the key objection to the proposal. ​“Why 16?” she asked. 

Tina Doyle, president of the League of Women Voters of New Haven, posed the question and the objection in a slightly different way. ​“Where does it stop? Will 15 be the new 16?” Doyle, pictured, asked.

The students and their supporters turned the question around by asking, in essence: Why should 18 be the voting age?

“Eighteen is not the inflexible legal requirement people think,” Riley said. ​“It’s not when all legal rights vest.” He pointed out that 16 is the legal age to obtain a driver’s license and to engage in consensual sex. It’s also the age at which youngsters can be tried in adult criminal court for some crimes.

Besides, Connecticut has already lowered the voting age, Riley pointed out. In 2009, the state enacted legislation allowing people who would turn 18 in time for the general election to vote in earlier primary races for that election, even though, Riley said, ​“participating in a primary election is much more difficult.” General elections receive more media attention and voters don’t have to know as much about individual candidates because they can always use party affiliation as a basis for voting.

The students didn’t provide a direct response to DePino’s main objection — a lack of maturity on the part of most teenagers.

Doyle, who happens to be the Republican Town Committee chair in DePino’s Ward 18, echoed that concern in explaining the League of Women Voters’ opposition to a referendum on the issue. Doyle said she based her assessment on ​“raising five teenagers plus grandchildren,” and ​“having been in and around the political process.”

(Riley said New18 had invited the League of Women voters to attend the public hearing, even though their ​“average age is not our demographic.” He was pleased Doyle attended the hearing, even to object. ​“It shows the issue has merit,” he said after the meeting.)

“How can you possibly make these decisions when have you three hours of homework?” Doyle asked. ​“Voting is for people a little further along in their maturity.”

A Wilbur Cross senior, who spoke during the public comment’s period, provided a quick retort. ​“17-year-olds have homework, clubs, and things to do after school, but adults have jobs and kids to take care of,” he said. ​“They have more burdens than us and they can still vote.” 

Another supporter, Darryl Brackeen Jr., pictured, who is running for alderman in Westville’s Ward 26, noted that when he was a student at Hillhouse High School: ​“There were students who had to take care of children of their own. There were students who had to be heads of households because their parents were working or couldn’t take care of them or their siblings.”

The students’ demeanor also provided an indirect response to the charge that 16-year-old aren’t mature enough to vote. They had a seriousness and sense of purpose that impressed some committee members.

“You have a group of young people here who are completely dedicated to being part of the political process,” Paca said. ​“Their efforts are not going unnoticed. They’re doing a real service by getting discussion going on a state level.” 

That doesn’t necessarily translate into aldermanic votes next week. Youth Committee Chair Clark said Board President Carl Goldfield is likely to oppose the measure not because he would necessarily oppose the idea of lowering the voting age, but because he hates referendums.

Yet, Riley said New18 has a shot at getting the referendum approved and at getting an actual law passed. And there are efforts underway in other states, most notably Massachusetts, to lower the voting age.

“When you engage the arguments on their merits, people change their minds,” Riley said.“They had just never considered the possibility of 16-year-olds voting before.”