A Decade of High School Students Speaking Through the Ballot Box
By Eric Bond
Ten years ago, Ben Miller, a junior at Montgomery Blair High School, made history as the first 16-year-old to register to vote in Takoma Park under the May 2013 amendment lowering the voting age in municipal elections. With the 2013 election, Takoma Park became the first jurisdiction in the United States to lower the voting age to 16. Twenty years previously, Takoma Park enfranchised city residents who are not U.S. citizens. (See the October 2023 Newsletter for an article on the 30th anniversary of non-citizen voting.)
“I voted to show that it is a valuable chance to be able to vote,” Miller said according to a 2013 Washington Post article.
“One of the reasons why I voted was because I was involved in getting the legislature passed,” said Nick Byron, according to a 2013 Silver Chips article. Byron and many other teenagers attended city council meetings to express their support for the amendment. “I wanted to be part of the history being made,” Byron said.
Today, Miller works in New York City as a case manager for incarcerated people reentering society. He says that he still supports the right of 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, but he is also quick to remind that in 2013 the Takoma Park City Council also extended the right to vote to people convicted of felonies. In 2016, the Maryland General Assembly overrode the veto of Gov. Larry Hogan and restored the voting rights of all formerly incarcerated people in Maryland to vote—but Takoma Park had led the way.
And Takoma Park also led the way with 16+ voting, with six other Maryland cities, later, extending that right. Ten cities around the county now allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote.
“As I see it, any way that we can reach the people who are currently not [part of] the political system and bringing them in to having a voice,” says Miller now. “I definitely think that’s a beautiful thing, and I think young people are definitely included in that.”
Tim Male, the Ward 2 councilmember in 2013, sponsored the legislation because he was concerned about low turnout in city elections.
“During the [2011] election, talking to voters, walking the neighborhoods, I heard a call for us to do something around protecting elections, like pass a proclamation,” says Male. “But I wanted it to be something that has substance to it. So after being elected, I spent time trying to fi nd ideas that I thought would matter, that would increase the electorate.
“Scotland was looking at an independence referendum and they let 16-year-olds vote. And I was like, Aha, we need to do that. We need to get more young people involved because if you look at the people who do vote in Takoma Park, it’s [mostly] very old people. Sixteen is [an age] when neuroscientists say that the human brain is developed to a point where it’s really good at making slow cognitive decisions. So part of the rationale is that this is a great set of people to engage in a thoughtful process around voting.”
“Sixteen-year-olds are old enough to assume a job and thus, have taxes come out of their paycheck, so it’s a pretty originating kind of argument of taxation without representation,” says Andrew Wilkes, the citizens chief policy and advocacy officer at VOTE16USA. “If you’re old enough to participate economically, you’re old enough to participate politically and cast a ballot on the issues of your choice.
“The objections or concerns that are sometimes raised are that 16- and 17-year-olds are not ready or mature enough to vote or that their vote will be a necessary replication of what their parents or mentors in their life necessarily think. And the research doesn’t bear either of those things out. We have seen that 16-year-olds, particularly in Takoma Park, show quite a bit of readiness relative to their older counterparts in terms of being ready and energized and coming out to the ballot box.”
In fact, registered 16- and 17-year-old voters have outperformed all registered voters in each municipal election from November 2013 onward, with 63% of them voting in 2022, compared to 49% of all registered voters.
“From a research perspective, this is a really interesting thing to study,” says Mike Hamner, the director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland. “Takoma Park is particularly instructive because of the way that young people were involved from the start. It really was the young people coming together with the wider community and making this happen. It doesn’t work as well in places where it’s just top down and there hasn’t been an initial engagement and then support.
“But at the end of the day, it’s about voting rights in efficacy and capacity and the way that the government does or doesn’t work for the people,” says Hamner.
Male also sees younger voting as a way to set a pattern of en – gaging in civic life.
“When I started digging into Scotland and Austria, what they had found was that people who were given the chance to vote at 16 are far more likely to keep voting. In other words, it’s habitforming to vote at 16, when they’re at home still living in the community they grew up in. It’s a great time to tap them as voters as opposed to 18, when everyone is just on the brink of college or leaving home.”
In the decade since Ben Miller cast his first vote, national politics have shifted to such an extent that some Takoma Park residents wonder about the future of the democratic process in the United States. Miller expresses his own discouragement. But he maintains his belief in the voting process, especially at the local level.
“I think voting when you’re 16 is a good way to teach young people about the process, about how to vote,” he says. “A lot of the young generation does not have too much faith in the partisan system. What is particularly exciting about voting in Takoma Park is that there’s so much more ability to effect change, to apply social pressure, and to organize.”
Takoma Park’s next municipal election will be in November 2024. Any resident who is 16 or older on election day and has registered is eligible to vote. Registration is available on the city website: takomaparkmd.gov.
