Voting at 16 in S.F.? Supervisor says the time has come

Supervisor Eric Mar speaks during a City Hall rally held by the San Francisco Youth Commission at City Hall supporting legislation to let 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections. Supporters wear something purple. less Supervisor Eric Mar speaks during a City Hall rally held by the San Francisco Youth Commission at City Hall supporting legislation to let 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections. Supporters wear ... more Photo: Jessica Christian, The Chronicle Photo: Jessica Christian, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Voting at 16 in S.F.? Supervisor says the time has come 1 / 12 Back to Gallery

Sixteen-year-olds can drive, work, pay taxes and be sentenced to life in prison. Now, some want the right to vote, too.

On Tuesday, San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos will attempt to make that happen by introducing a measure that would extend the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds.

Avalos and other supporters say it will encourage civic engagement among youths and instill in them lifelong voting habits at a time when turnout is low. Detractors call the measure foolhardy at best and at worst a political ploy by progressives to try and win more votes from young people, who tend to lean liberal in their voting.

“I have seen the power of young people to be able to make changes and positive contributions to their community, and it makes sense to give them the right to vote,” Avalos said.

In January, the San Francisco Youth Commission passed a resolution urging the expansion of voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds. Avalos is proposing a city charter amendment. It would require the votes of six of the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors to place an initiative on the ballot — voters would have the final say. The change would apply only to city elections.

If it passed, the measure would make San Francisco the first major U.S. city to lower the voting age. In the past two years, two small cities in Maryland, Takoma Park and Hyattsville, lowered their voting age to 16.

“You can drive, you can work, you can pay taxes and you can be tried in adult court, and yet you are denied the right to vote,” said San Francisco Youth Commissioner Joshua Cardenas, an 18-year-old senior at Archbishop Riordan High School who has not yet had an opportunity to vote. “There is a contradiction there. Certainly, they have the knowledge and competence to vote at 16.”

Cynical view

Not everyone agrees. “It’s a terrible idea,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “Sixteen-year-olds have a lot going for them, but civic judgment isn’t one of those things.”

The voting age has long been debated. In 1971, during the Vietnam War, Congress amended the U.S. Constitution to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, driven by the argument that people old enough to fight and die for their country were old enough to vote.

Since then, 18 has been considered the legal age of adulthood. Scientifically, however, the line that distinguishes children from adults is ambiguous.

“There isn’t a single age at which an adolescent becomes like an adult for purposes of thinking through things. It really depends on the issue and domain,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of “Age of Opportunity: Lessons From the New Science of Adolescence.”

Maturity level

Steinberg said studies have shown that regions of the brain important for logical reasoning are fully developed by the time people are 16. That’s not true for kids 15 and younger.

He said young people 16 and older make decisions just as well as adults when they have a long period of time, when they aren’t rushed, when the decision isn’t emotional and when they aren’t being coerced. When it comes to voting, Steinberg said, “that doesn’t mean they make perfect decisions; it just means they are no more or less perfect than adults are.”

Science aside, others see the proposal to lower the voting age as political gamesmanship.

“It’s a ploy,” said San Francisco political analyst David Latterman. “Progressives are looking under the couch cushions to get more voters because their policies alone aren’t winning races.

“Avalos is doing this because he thinks he is going to gain more progressive votes throughout the city,” Latterman said. “He isn’t doing this because he cares about the children or civic responsibility.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response other than (Latterman) is a virulent idiot,” Avalos retorted. “Referring to young people as spare change in the couches is just the type of ageist attitudes our policy is seeking to change.”

Progressive bloc?

San Francisco progressives have lost influence in recent years. Avalos’ political ally Supervisor David Campos lost the 2014 election for state Assembly by roughly 2,900 votes to the more moderate David Chiu. Hypothetically, a large turnout by 16- and 17-year-old voters could have flipped the result.

But history suggests that even if the right to vote were extended to younger voters, it might not make much of a difference. In the 2014 election, just 8 percent of people ages 18 to 24 voted, according to a study at UC Davis. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2013 that approximately 8,400 people ages 15 to 17 live in San Francisco, giving no breakdown for 16- and 17-year-olds.

“We have not had a generation this disconnected before from normal electoral politics,” said Corey Cook, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. “Voting is habitual. So if you can start to build habitual voting when they are becoming civically aware, then maybe creating habitual voters out of younger voters will increase over time.”

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who has daughters ages 16 and 19 and has made a mission of improving civics education in the state, said she was intrigued by the idea.

“Overall, the concept of engaging a younger generation, the future leaders, is always a step in the right direction,” Cantil-Sakauye said. “The con is we would really need to improve civics education to create critical thinkers who can independently evaluate the concepts.”

Nina Avroneva, a 16-year-old junior at San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts who wants to see more funding for schools, said people her age should be given the chance to vote: “I think the future is in our generation, and us having a say is an important part. And a lot of teenagers will be more motivated if we have the option to do it.”

City Hall rally

About 50 people showed up at a rally that Avalos held Tuesday afternoon at City Hall to unveil the legislation.

“We have a passion for government,” said Anna Bernick, a 17-year-old junior at George Washington High School. “But if we don’t have a right to vote, our impact is limited.”

Anna He, a 16-year-old junior at Lowell High School, said, “I believe at 16 we are more than capable of making important decisions that affect us.”

Supervisor Eric Mar, a supporter of the idea, told the students, “You could help shape San Francisco with your values and your vision.”

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: egreen@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @emilytgreen