Lower the Voting Age

As you may have read, there is a movement to get Connecticut to lower its voting age to seventeen in certain circumstances. The idea is that someone turns eighteen by the time of a general election, they should be able to vote in the primary of that election. An impetus of the movement is Daniel Peterson, a noble citizen:

Daniel Peterson is a senior at West Haven's Notre Dame High School. He is headed for the military when he graduates and believes 17-year-old's who are old enough to enlist are old enough to vote.

"You're potentially sending someone off to war and a life-or-death situation and its kind of hard to not give them the full choice ...," said Peterson. "You're fighting for what somebody else thinks. Although you might believe in it you might not be fighting for your own opinions."

He is right, and I have voiced these same concerns about our current drinking age as well as the proposed smoking age, that the Courant covered several weeks ago. I have no idea why Susan Bysiewicz hadn't though of this earlier. I can't imagine that many people would be against this, and given how political ambitious she is, this would be the type of thing she could have supported. It is frankly embarrassing that this proposal had to originate from students, not from Bysiewicz herself or her office. It is not a difficult concept to understand, and if she spent slightly less time on her optical voting machines, she could help initiate reform on more significant issues.