ELECTION 2020
In 2016, San Francisco lawmakers had a splashy plan to enfranchise young voters, increase election turnout, and perhaps create a new voting bloc for themselves, all by lowering the voting age to 16.
But voters rejected the bid to change the city’s voting age by 52% to 48%, apparently unmoved by the symmetry of a 16 in ’16 campaign.
The plan seems to be forever young, however, as it’s up for a vote yet again in a few weeks, this time dubbed Prop G. Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee, soon to retire, and the SF Youth Commission resurrected the proposal earlier this year. After a relatively narrow loss in 2016, they see current social and political issues like Black Lives Matter and climate change engaging more teens — all the more reason to try again.
“Conditions are right, you can’t let an opportunity go,” Frances Hsieh, aide to Yee, tells The Frisc. In fact, they’ll continue pressing the issue even if the vote doesn’t go their way again this time. “I can see it coming up again in 2024,” says Hsieh.
Politicians usually push for new voting blocs because they’re confident newly enfranchised voters will vote for them. Hsieh says “that may be the reason some people campaign for this,” but denies that’s her boss’s agenda.
Starting a lifelong habit
In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that Americans born after 1996 have largely liberal political attitudes that politicians in a city like San Francisco might want to expand, favoring more active government and a more diverse society.
The US Census doesn’t tabulate how many 16- and 17-year-olds reside in San Francisco, but the latest data reveal that the slightly larger 15-to-17-year-old bracket comprises about 16,824 people, less than 2% of the city’s latest population count.
“Eighteen is a year of transition.”
— Kate Stewart, mayor of Takoma Park, MD, one of four US towns that allow under-18 voting.
Prop G backers say that kids who start voting younger are more likely to keep voting, and to increase turnout in the long run. “Voter turnout of young people is not very high nationally,” says Sarah Cheung, a 17-year-old appointed by the mayor to SF’s Youth Commission. Voting at 16 “will allow people to [start] a lifelong voting habit early.”
There is some empirical evidence to support this. Scotland lowered its voting age to 16 in 2015, and subsequent research shows that “the younger first time voters are, the greater their participation,” University of Edinburgh lecturer Jan Eichhorn wrote in 2017.
Studies from other countries like Austria, which lowered its voting age in 2007, found that teen voting turnout was comparable to other age groups. But academics caution that not enough time has passed to observe young voters turn into older voters and to know whether a lower voting age increases the odds of future participation.
In the US, just four cities allow 16-year-olds to vote, all of them in Maryland. Takoma Park, a Washington, DC suburb with a population of about 17,000, became the first in 2013. “Eighteen is a year of transition,” Takoma Park Mayor Kate Stewart tells The Frisc, suggesting that people under 18 have fewer responsibilities that would keep them away from the polls for the first time.
Unlike San Francisco, Takoma Park could change its voting law with just a city council vote. Stewart says that the debate around the measure “was very divisive,” with opponents arguing “that young people would just be coerced by parents to vote a certain way.”
An economic argument against G
Four years ago in San Francisco, the argument against teen voting carried the day. Prop G’s loudest critic today says we can’t have younger teenagers voting on issues they don’t have a personal stake in.
Even though voters often weigh in on issues that don’t affect them directly, Richie Greenberg, who penned the official argument against Prop G, contends that lack of participation in economic matters like homeownership should negate younger teens’ ability to vote.
“There are problems with these kids being given the keys to increase taxes on their own parents’ homes,” Greenberg, a former Republican candidate for SF mayor, tells The Frisc. “You’re going below the age for being able to sign a contract.”
(In California, minors can sign contracts, but they’re not binding in the same way they are for adults.)
His official argument, which also contends that “most of our city teens don’t drive, do not work, and have not participated in owning or managing a business,” ignores the fact that many civic issues — education, justice, public transportation, and much more — directly affect 16- and 17-year-olds.
California law demarcates the voting age as 18, so would Prop G even be legal? Greenberg thinks so, since California’s age limit applies to statewide contests but not necessarily local ones. But Stephen Duvernay, a lawyer who specializes in constitutional litigation, says it might not be so clearcut.
“Because lowering the voting age for purely municipal elections is a novel question — it hasn’t been addressed by California courts — it could provoke a legal challenge,” Duvernay says, particularly if challengers fear the youth vote will undermine their own ballot box goals.
“The question turns on San Francisco’s control over its municipal affairs,” he adds. City authority in such matters is usually absolute, but since no California city has tried this before, a creative legal challenge could find a weakness.
San Francisco has rarely backed down from a political fight because of the threat of a lawsuit. But before the city starts priming the lawyers, we’ll have to see whether voters back teens at the ballot box, or leave them at the kids’ table.
Adam Brinklow has lived in and written about San Francisco for 13 years, covering local communities for outlets like Curbed SF, SFGate, San Franciscomagazine, SF Weekly, and EDGE SF.