“An Act enabling children’s right to vote”

Written By Represent Children

New legislative session, new opportunity to get the Joint Committee on Election Laws of the MA Legislature to undertake universal design for universal suffrage, and to get the public to think and act.

Robin Chen and associates from the Children’s Voting Colloquium and beyond are petitioning the 193rd General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for An Act enabling children’s right to vote S.412 / H.670. You can fill out this form to add your support.

Here is a compilation video of the oral testimony for S.412/H.670 An Act Enabling Children’s Right to Vote, presented to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Election Laws. The 12-minute compilation video pulls from the archival recording on the hearing landing page and features — from order of appearance at the hearing — Maura Workman Mandell (7 years old), John Wall, Robin Chen, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse (78 years old), and Rod Malloy. The compilation video link is also posted on the Media page on the Children’s Voting Colloquium website. 

Written testimony was submitted to the Committee by: (in alphabetical order)

Key points of S.412/H.670 proposed changes:

  1. Changes the minimum voting age of 18 "years" to 18 "days". The MA Voter Registration Form ‘Question 7. Identification #’ accepts the last four digits of Social Security Number. My experience with filing birth certificates and subsequently receiving social security numbers is that there's been a lag time of 23 days, 11 days, and 10 days between giving birth and receiving the latter.

  2. “A voter who lacks capacity to make voting decisions independently who arrives willingly at a polling site with a family member may receive from this family member any guidance, support, or executive assistance necessary to cast their ballot, except that no such ballot may be counted if the voter informs the presiding officer that the ballot should not count.”

  3. Gives under-17-year-olds the option to be included in the public street listing.

  4. Annual municipal census is instructed to count all residents as young as 1 day old, not only those 3 years of age and older.

  5. "During the course of the annual listing of residents, the registrars shall notify residents of the opportunity to register themselves or their dependent family members as voters and shall provide residents with assistance in registering themselves or their dependent family members to vote."

  6. Establishes "a non-partisan baby and caregiver voter challenge program," and similar for students enrolled in grades K-8, and asks the state secretary to work with several leaders to promulgate "regulations to implement the program in participating birth centers, childcare centers, and pediatric medical practices in the commonwealth" as well as “in participating schools and afterschool or community centers in the commonwealth.”

Definitions:

  • "family member" is already defined in Chapter 50 section 1 as "a spouse or person residing in the same household, in-laws, father, mother, sister or brother of the whole or half blood, son, daughter, adopting parent or adopted child, stepparent or stepchild, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, grandparent or grandchild."

  • “Capacity to make voting decisions independently” shall mean having the ability to understand and appreciate the nature and consequences of voting decisions, including the benefits and risks of and alternatives to any candidate for office, referendum question, or matter of public affairs, and to reach an informed decision, without significant input from a caregiver

Here is the MA legislative session calendar, with deadlines and significant dates.

  • JANUARY 20, 2023— 3rd Friday in January of 1st Annual Session —
    Deadline for Submitting Petitions (5:00 p.m.).

  • Join Rule 10 deadline (February 7, 2024) the date all bills must receive a committee report or extension.

EARNED MEDIA

Fill out this form to support Petitioning the 193rd General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for An Act enabling children’s right to vote SD2059 / HD3788

Endorsements

John Wall, Philadelphia, PA. Author of Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy (Bloomsbury 2022), which argues that denying children the vote in democratic societies is both unjust and counterproductive, and editor of Exploring Children’s Suffrage: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ageless Voting (Palgrave Macmillan 2023), a multidisciplinary study of ageless enfranchisement by leading political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, historians, economists, medical researchers, legal scholars, and others.

Mike Weimann, Berlin, Germany. Long-time engaged in equal rights without age limits, participating in a constitutional complaint in Germany to abolish the voting age, author of the book "Wahlrecht für Kinder" (to be published in English soon) http://en.kraetzae.de/

Eric Wiland. Wiland, E. (2018). Should Children Have the Right to Vote?. In: Boonin, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Sonja Grover’s testimony makes reference to her 2011 book, Young People’s Human Rights and the Politics of Voting Age (Springer Link website, which indicates "15k Accesses" for this book). There, too, anyone can download the Preface and Table of Contents. WorldCat shows that it is in 434 libraries, see.

She also refers to
Grover, S., Wall, J., & Chen, R. (2023). The Legal Case for Children’s Right to Vote in the United States. The International Journal of Children's Rights, 31(4), 791-810. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-31040001

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Let Kids Vote! at “MLK March for What We Believe In”