One teen, one vote

Last week, when I wrote about the upcoming June elections for European Parliament and the growing unease going on full panic in Brussels with regard to projections that “radical right parties” could be the big winners, I suggested the only way to avoid this was to tone down the climate apocalypse rhetoric. I was wrong. I was very wrong.

It appears that there is another way to try and eliminate the danger of transition sceptics winning these — and future — elections and that’s lowering the voting age.

Austria, apparently, led the way back in 2007, lowering the voting age to 16. Malta followed in 2018. Then, in 2022, Belgium also lowered the voting age, and a year later Germany did the same. These will be the first elections in which 16-year-old Germans and Belgians will vote for MEPs.

Learning this, courtesy of podcast partner Tammy Nemeth, caused a shock, I won’t lie. The reason it caused a shock was that while I might regularly forget where my glasses are (on my nose) I clearly remember my own teen years and how I used to think back then.

David Blackmon summed it up quite aptly in a private conversation recently. “Let's all remember what was top of our minds when we were 16,” he said. “About 95% of it was driven by hormones. The other 5%, for me, was driven by beer.” Is there an adult who wouldn’t be able to relate? I doubt that.

It is because of that hormonal surge, I suppose, that most 16-year-olds share at least some general tendencies during that period of their lives. These tendencies include, but are not limited to, getting easily outraged, passionately searching for a meaning in life, and feeling pretty much everything very, very deeply.

The teen years are some of the best in most people’s lives but to say that they are easy years would be a lie. Teenagers are eager to change the world and tailor it to their needs and desires. At 16, we are all eager to do something.

This is a truly wonderful thing. It is also a very dangerous thing — in risky circumstances. Because teenagers also tend to be highly suggestible — and the only cure for suggestibility is experience that only comes with years lived.

Evidence of this suggestibility is all over the news, from Greta Thunberg’s protests a few years ago to art vandalism and street blockades more recently. The people partaking in these protests and blockades tend to be young, often very young. Because when we are young, we are much more easily swayed by others’ opinions. And that’s because we want to belong. We want to be in the in-crowd.

These days, the in-crowd is the climate alarm crowd. It’s trendy to care about the planet and even if it wasn’t, most young people care instinctively — a very welcome fact for the climate crusaders in political and activist circles.

Another very welcome fact for the abovementioned life forms is teens’ tendency to dramatise, and I say this lovingly. No drama is too small for a teen, speaking from experience. You should’ve seen me at 16. Actually, you shouldn’t have. At this age, everything is a drama and every drama is huge. Teens love to fret over problems real and imaginary.

Now put these tendencies in an information environment bursting with extreme weather news, doomsday research reports, and grim warnings about the future of the planet. Few, even among so-called adults, tend to pay attention to who funds the research reports, who sets the agenda for the news outlets, and who benefits from the grim warnings. Why would teens?

This makes teens ripe for the picking by politicians whose greatest goal in life is to stay in power. Teens are much easier to convince that said politicians have their best interests at heart than cynical adults. And they are much more eager to vote for the reasons described above.

Not only this, but some MEPs have suggested that governments lower the age for standing as a candidate for the European Parliament. Because obviously having 20-year-olds or, why not, teens again, as legislators is a wonderful idea. Greta Thunberg will win by a landslide if this happens, I’m sure, and the EU’s energy policies will only benefit from this.

“If we need young people to feel truly engaged in our democracies that means having more young people in political parties, having more young people in positions of political power, and having young people's opinions taken seriously in our politics,” said a lady described by Euronews as “a policy and advocacy manager for the European Youth Forum”.

The European Youth Forum is an umbrella NGO for various youth NGOs seeking greater representation of kids in politics. And the lady, by the name of Lauren Mason, is ecstatic with government decisions to lower the voting age.

But I have an even better idea. Let’s get them while they’re even younger. Let’s lower the voting age to 13. That will give prospective MEPs even more voters to indoctrinate with climate alarmism and “engage in our democracies”.

These voters are urgently needed by the status quo politicians because of that so-called “far-right” wave that may sweep Europe in June, especially amid the growing farmers’ protests across the EU. As Reuters put it charmingly, farmers “represent a growing constituency” for that “far-right”.

So, let’s all lower the voting age to 13 and have a few million young Europeans feel engaged in our democracies by going to the polls in June. I even know how it will go.

A lot of these young Europeans, otherwise known as children per criminal codes and —amazingly — per EU regulations, too, will vote the way their peer groups on social media tell them, even if not all in these peer groups are actually their peers. Given the popularity of climate catastrophism among children, these votes will go to the right place.

Others, however, will not vote as expected and hoped for. Some will ask their parents who to vote for, although I do suspect these will be a minority, and a tiny one. Parents are uncool by definition, after all.

Yet those who do consult with their uncool parents might vote the wrong way and get some “far-right” legislators into the EP because tiny this minority might be but if mum tells you “Go and vote” you go and vote.

Tiny “Ask mum” minority aside, there may well be plenty of young voters who would vote the wrong way because they bear regular witness to how their parents struggle with bills and are forced to refuse them the nicer things in life because they can’t afford them.

Loud and seemingly multitudinous as the climate catastrophism camp is, I suspect there are at least as many kids who do not lose sleep over climate change because their families have more pressing problems.

That’s the problem with turning voting into a weapon to secure your position of power. It could turn against you because — I realise this might be a shocker — farmers have children, too. And so do all the people that Europe’s monumentally disastrous energy policies have made poorer.

In fact, I will go as far as to suggest the youth participation advocates who so eagerly campaign for more children votes, under the assumption these votes will go left, might face a nasty surprise.

Because there have always been more poor people than rich people, even in the “garden” that is Europe, per prominent political poet Josep Borrell. And poor people only used to vote left, when the left cared about them, sincerely or not. Now, they’re going to be voting “far-right”. Their children might vote “far-right”, too.

So, by all means, lower the voting age. Give children the chance to draft the course of our collective future. But don’t go complaining they voted the wrong way just because you assumed they have all been brainwashed into your climate cult.

The worst mistake one can make is underestimate teens. They really do take stuff extremely seriously and dramatically. And unlike their seniors in the cult, they take all stuff seriously, not just climate change. Must be all those hormones.