On Friday, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy published an op-ed in The Post, under the headline “To restore Gen Z’s love of America, make them pass a civics test or serve the country to vote.”
Ramaswamy advocates for a constitutional amendment that would raise the voting age to 25. Under his plan, 18- to 24-year-olds would only be able to vote if they serve in the military, do civil service as a firefighter or EMT, or pass a civics test.
But it’s a proposal that I, as a 22-year-old, think is likely to backfire.
I’ve long admired Ramaswamy, and I vigorously agree that the problems he cites — military enrollment shortages, lack of civics knowledge, declining youth patriotism — are urgent issues our society must grapple with.
But disenfranchising my generation is not a solution.
If Ramaswamy’s goal is to increase military and civil service participation, it seems more than likely that gains would be, at best, negligible.
As he notes, only 16% of 18- to 25-year-olds say they’re proud to be Americans, and only 23% of them are voting in the first place. Surely, disengaged, unpatriotic young people won’t be tripping over themselves to enlist in the military or run into a burning building just so they can cast a ballot.
There are better ways to boost military and civil service engagement. Rather than take away a right, why not provide incentives — whether that be in the form of tax credits, college credit or even student debt relief.
And if Ramaswamy’s goal is to increase youth patriotism and make young Americans love our country, taking away their right to participate in democracy isn’t going to help.
I’m a very patriotic young person, and I believe everyone should be proud to be an American — but I don’t think they should lose the right to vote if they don’t. Want to make an already despondent citizen even more despondent? Tell them their voice doesn’t matter.
And while I absolutely agree that every adult should have requisite civics knowledge, the fact that many Americans don’t is an indictment of our education system, not of Gen Z.
According to the Nation’s Report Card, only 22% of 8th graders are proficient in civics. The kids who struggled the most to meet the National Assessment of Educational Progress benchmarks were public school students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Certainly this is a symptom of deeper educational failures — and not any 13-year-old’s fault.
It’s more likely than not that disadvantaged young people who were failed by the school system would disproportionately lose the right to vote if a civics test was put into place. We shouldn’t be targeting their rights; we should be targeting the education system that let them down.
A much better fix would be bolstering investment in civics education and even making the proposed civics test a requirement for high school graduation, not for voting.
But even if we were to implement a civics test requirement for young voters, why stop there? Why not make it universal? After all, two in three Americans wouldn’t be able to pass a citizenship test. Does ignorance somehow become more excusable after your 25th birthday?
Although Ramaswamy is right to ring the alarm bells on declining patriotism and civic engagement, his solution seems more punitive than restorative.
Participating in democracy is critical to becoming an engaged citizen. If anything, we should be concerned with how to increase youth voter turnout. That requires removing barriers, not adding them.
Besides, any presidential candidate should be concerned about attracting the youth vote. At just 37, Ramaswamy is in a great position to do so. A fresh, young candidate like him should be working to make young people feel heard.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
