
A Republican presidential candidate wants to propose a constitutional amendment to raise the voting age from 18 to 25.
Tech mogul Vivek Ramaswamy plans to introduce his proposal during a campaign stop in Iowa with Governor Kim Reynolds (R).
The former CEO told Fox News Digital that he plans to announce a constitutional amendment to raise the voting age from 18 to 25, unless a person serves the nation in the military or as a first responder or can pass the civics test immigrants take when becoming citizens.
“We’re going to be talking about this to a large audience of actually young people in Iowa,” Ramaswamy said. “Gov. Kim Reynolds is going to be there tomorrow. There was going to be the perfect place to roll this out tomorrow night to lay out one of the most, I think, bluntly, ambitious proposals we’ve rolled out in this campaign.
“Which is to say that we want to restore civic duty in the mindset of the next generation of Americans. And how we want to do it is to say that, if you want to vote as an 18-year-old, between the ages of 18 and 25, you need to either do your civic duty through service to the country — that’s six months of service in either military service or as a first responder, police, fire or otherwise — or else you have to pass the same civics test an immigrant has to pass in order to become a naturalized citizen who can vote in this country.”
“At age 25, that falls away,” he added.
The GOP candidate also said his proposed amendment would “supercede” the 26th Amendment that sets the national voting age to 18.
Ramaswamy noted that the 26th Amendment was passed in 1971 and that one “of the arguments for that was that if you’re going to have a draft, military draft, that brings 18-year-olds in, then they ought to have the right to vote.”
amaswamy said he hopes the amendment will help younger Americans get out and vote more by “making voting something that’s a true privilege by attaching real civic duty to it.”
“I think we will make it more desirable to vote by actually adding more meaning to the act of voting rather than just emotion that people go through or accustomed to going through. And I think that will actually be positive for our civic culture. And I also think that this can be unifying,” he explained. “Whether you’re the kid of a billionaire in the Upper East Side of Manhattan or whether you’re the daughter of a single mother in the inner city, it doesn’t matter. You have the same requirements to be part of the special group of people at a young age who get to participate in deciding who governs the country. And I think that restores a sense of civic equality and a sense of civic duty that we have long missed in our country.”
I agree entirely. Exceptions for those who serve in the military and first responders. Voting at 18 lets people who never worked and paid taxes or had to save for a house and support a family or even pay off their college loans make electoral decisions having little appreciation of the consequences.
Also, we currently have captive audiences attending college who are often subjected to barrages of liberalism from instructors wishing to re-live their 1960’s anti-Vietnam war protest days.
I agree 100%!
Agree. We no longer have a draft, so no one is compelled to serve at 18+.
Wonderful idea! Do it!
Ir isn’t going to be easy. We are no longer a country with principles, although this is a principled stand. But most will simply look at it and determine what the effect will be of having the 18-25 year olds out of the voting process and vote depending on that result.
Let me see: Career politicians passing an amendment that will limit their influence over the most impressionable segment of the electorate? I’d give better odds to their term-limiting themselves.
I believe EVERYONE 21 years old (in every state) should be able to smoke, drink alcohol, vote, serve their time in the Military AND change gender if they want.
21 or older ONLY!!!
Hooray & Yes
LMAO…that won’t stop niggeRAT party cheating.