November 10, 2010: Conservative Columnist Advocates Repeal of 26th Amendment to Hinder Obama’s Re-election Chances

In a somewhat sarcastic column, conservative author Ann Coulter advocates the repeal of the 26th Amendment, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote (see July 5, 1971), apparently in an effort to make it more difficult to re-elect President Obama. Coulter writes: “[T]he argument for allowing children to vote was that 18-year-olds could drink and be conscripted into the military, so they ought to be allowed to vote. But 18-year-olds aren’t allowed to drink anymore. We no longer have a draft. In fact, while repealing the 26th Amendment, we ought to add a separate right to vote for members of the military, irrespective of age.… Eighteen- to 26-year-olds don’t have property, spouses, children, or massive tax bills. Most of them don’t even have jobs because the president they felt so good about themselves for supporting wrecked the economy.” (Coulter is referring to Obama and the fact that young voters turned out in record-breaking numbers to vote for him in 2008.) Coulter cites research showing that human brains “are not fully developed until age 25 and are particularly deficient in their frontal lobes, which control decision-making, rational thinking, judgment, the ability to plan ahead and to resist impulses. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that in 1971. Those of you who have made it to age 26 without dying in a stupid drinking game—and I think congratulations are in order, by the way—understand how insane it is to allow young people to vote. It would almost be tolerable if everyone under the age of 30 just admitted they voted for Obama because someone said to them: ‘C’mon, it’s really cool! Everyone’s doing it!’ We trusted them, and now we know it was a mistake.” Except for 1980, when young voters voted for Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in almost equal amounts, young voters have, Coulter writes, “consistently embarrassed themselves,” presumably by voting for Democrats. The 2008 results, Coulter writes, prove that “[t]oday’s youth are the infantilized, pampered, bicycle-helmeted children of the Worst Generation. They foisted this jug-eared, European socialist on us and now they must be punished. Voters aged 18 to 29 years old comprised nearly a fifth of the voting population in 2008 and they voted overwhelmingly for Obama, 66 percent to 31 percent. And it only took 12 to 14 years of North Korean-style brainwashing to make them do it! At least their teachers haven’t brainwashed them into burning books or ratting out their parents to the Stasi yet. (Of course, before teaching them book-burning, at least their professors would be forced to teach them what a book is.) It would make more sense to give public school teachers and college professors 20 votes apiece than to allow their impressionable students to vote.… Young people voted for Obama as a fashion statement.… Liberals fight tooth-and-nail to create an electorate disposed to vote Democratic by, for example, demanding that felons and illegal aliens be given the vote. But it’s at least possible that illegal aliens and criminals pay taxes or have fully functioning frontal lobes. Republicans ought to fight for their own electorate, which at a minimum ought to mean voters with fully functioning brains and the possibility of a tax bill. Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to vote.” [Town Hall (.com), 11/10/2010]