Updated at 3:02 p.m.
Officials in some Massachusetts communities, including Northampton and Holyoke, have pushed to lower the voting age for local elections to 16.
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley has proposedlowering the age for federal elections, too. But a new poll finds — by a 2-to-1 margin — Massachusetts residents oppose that change.
Western New England University pollster Tim Vercellotti said surveyors asked respondents to explain their opinions.
Tim Vercellotti, Western New England University: On the support side, 21 percent said, "Yes, they're mature enough to vote." Nineteen percent say they have varied views and opinions. Seventeen percent say elections are about their future.
Now, on the opposition side: Half — 51 percent — said they're just not mature enough to vote at 16 and 17. And then 22 percent said they don't have enough knowledge about candidates and issues at that age.
Adam Frenier, NEPR: There was a bit more support for allowing younger people to vote in local elections, but most were still against the idea. Any thoughts why adults would be more willing to go along with the idea of having 16- and 17-year-olds vote locally?
There are a couple possibilities, and we can only speculate. It's hard to tell from the data in hand, but one might be that local issues may be things that teens are thinking about, and in particular funding for public education.
We do see some teen engagement showing up at school committee meetings, even staging some walkouts when programs are threatened by budget cuts. The other possibility is that people may have thought, "Let's give cities and towns this power individually. We're not ready for a big sweeping change nationally."
For both of these questions, what trends did you notice in terms of who is supporting it and who was not supporting it, in terms of the backgrounds of the people you spoke with?
What we saw was a very clear partisan breakdown. So, Democrats are more likely to support lowering the voting age nationally…and a majority of Democrats support lowering the voting age in local elections in Massachusetts. Republicans were quite consistent and unified in their opposition.
We also saw variation by age, as you might expect. Eighteen to 39-year-olds [are] far more likely to support lowering the voting age than senior citizens. And, interestingly, we saw that the age at which the survey respondent cast his or her first vote -- the younger you were at time a first vote, the more likely you are to support lowering the voting age to 16 and 17.
And while the survey participants were against lower voting ages, they really seem to favor other ways of civic engagement for young people, such as walkouts over climate change and community service requirements to graduate high school. What can you tell us about that?
This was fascinating. Sixty-nine percent of the sample of 495 adults said they somewhat or strongly supported these recent walkouts among high school students to voice concerns about climate change. Again, we see some partisan distinctions there as well. Democrats [are] far more supportive of this than were Republicans, and we see some variation along some of the other measures as well, age in particular.
The one question where there was almost uniform approval was this idea of requiring community service in order to graduate from high school. Seventy-seven percent of the sample supported that, and majorities of Democrats, Republicans and unenrolled voters all supported it. And – fascinating -- 91 percent of parents of children ages 13 to 18 supported community service requirements for high school graduation. Parents really like the idea of young people giving back to the community as part of their high school experience.
