Question

"Let Children Vote. Even 13-year-olds."
by Laurence Pevsner

Still, serious arguments against children’s suffrage abound. Eighteen to 21-year-olds already vote in dismal numbers - why should we give the vote to people even younger, who probably care less? Even if they do care to vote, children don’t have the intellectual capacity or the life experience to understand complex issues. Supposing you did stick them in a polling booth, they’re likely to vote exactly as their parents tell them to - essentially giving parents double, triple, or quadruple the votes.

But we’ve heard these arguments before.

A 1910 pamphlet from the National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage, for example, emphasized remarkably similar objections, such as “because 90% of the women either do not want it, or do not care” and “because 80% of the women eligible to vote are married and can only double or annul their husband's votes.”

People of color have also suffered greatly on account of specious logic. Following the Civil War that should’ve settled the issue, white politicians and phrenologists trotted out “biology” to argue that a black person’s brain was inferior, and so black people weren’t capable of understanding the issues. The result was the literacy test, one of the most despicable stains on the history of our democracy.



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Use the passage to answer the question.

In these paragraphs, which is the major comparison being made?

(1 point)

the intelligence of 13-year-olds and 21-year-olds

political changes between the Civil War and 1910

nineteenth-century scientific practices and those of today

arguments against children’s, women’s, and Black suffrage

Answer 1

arguments against children’s, women’s, and Black suffrage

The paragraphs show how similar objections (lack of interest, intellectual inferiority, being controlled by others) were used historically against children's, women's, and Black voting rights.