11 Female Voices, From Age 13 to 110, on Why the Vote Matters:

Mari Copeny, @LittleMissFlint, water rights activist (then-13-years-old) said this:

It’s very frustrating that I have to depend on other people to vote for things I care about. It makes me mad. I think kids have more sense than some of the adults — we should be allowed to vote! But it’s also important to be educated and not just follow what everyone else is doing.

Also take note of remarks by

• America Ferrera, actor and co-founder of Harness (then-36-years-old):

I had been taught my whole childhood that the beauty of this country is that we’re all created equal. I really believed that: It’s what I loved about my country. And so to have the curtain pulled back and understand the nuances to that promise, and the ways in which we are not all equally resourced or given access to find liberty, pursue our happiness and, in some cases, even just to live, was hard.

We need to create a culture in which people see that their voices and their lives matter. Because too many people in this country feel written off. They receive those messages every day in the news that they hear, in the lack of representation at every level of decision-making and power in this country. They’ve lost faith that change is going to come through a system that has historically ignored their voices.

Knowing our history, the good and the bad, is the first step. I want my children to love the country they live in, but I also want them to be clear-eyed about what that country is. Only from that place can you truly strive to make it better.

• Cindy McCain, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the McCain Institute for International Leadership (then-66-years-old) said:

To me voting is the most important thing you can do as an American. It’s your right and your duty.

My mother and father came out of the Depression and World War II, and so voting was a big deal in our house. I remember when I was in elementary school, my dad came and got me out of class so that he and my mom could vote. They wanted me to see it.

…We’re still struggling with equal pay and other issues that affect women on a daily basis. But look how far we’ve come! Our opinions, where we stand and what we want to have for our country are very important now, and we’re a constituency that has to be looked at.

• Naomi Replansky (then-102-years-old):

  When I was 10, in 1928, the campaign of Al Smith (then New York State governor) for president, against Herbert Hoover, was fierce. In my neighborhood, the East Bronx of New York, with a mixed population of Italians and Jews, mostly immigrants, all the kids were for Al Smith. Probably so were their parents. Election propaganda was chalk writings on the walls: “Hoover stinks on ice” was a popular slogan for us kids. Al Smith lost. Later, I learned that one of the main reasons he lost was because he was Catholic. That bigotry stuck in my puzzled, childish mind.

Since at least the 1990’s, there have been efforts by American under-18s to claim the right to vote:

“Should the Voting Age Be Lowered?” - Timothy Noah writing as Chatterbox for Slate (Nov 8, 2000)

• Vita Wallace, then aged 16, advocated eliminating the age limit entirely in a 1991 article for The Nation:

  “What I suggest is that children be allowed to grow into their own right to vote at whatever rate suits them individually. … As for the ability to read and write, that should never be used as a criterion for eligibility, since we have already learned from painful past experience that literacy tests can be manipulated to insure discrimination. In any case, very few illiterates vote, and probably very few children would want to vote as long as they couldn’t read or write. … I think I would not have voted until I was 8 or 9, but perhaps if I had known I could vote I would have taken an interest sooner.”

• Chatterbox posed a few questions to his 7-year-old son, Willie:

  Do you think you should be able to vote?

  Yes.