Should teenagers be allowed to vote?

Teenagers do not all act the same way or think the same way as each other. Some are mature and some have no idea what they are doing and do not care about the consequences.Sometimes there are teenagers that have the capacity to behave like a mature adult. I have personally met people my age who seem to have that adult mentality where everything is serious. I think that most teenagers have the capacity to act mature enough to vote. I think adults make generalizations about us. They see one of us doing something immature, and they think we are all like that, but that is also a generalization; not all adults think that about us. I think that teenagers should be allowed to vote.

Teenagers are a big part of the population in this country. I think that if teenagers could vote, the results of politics would be a little different. It is true that young teenagers are probably not ready for voting, which is something really important in society. Teenagers start to become more mature as they get older. My point is that the voting age should be lowered to sixteen. Even fifteen would be okay. 

For example, in ASTI, we start to see freshmen and sophomores think critically in their work about things that matter in the world such as family, college (higher education), environment, politics, etc. We put our own opinion, and a lot of times people (adults) are impressed by us. We are like young adults. Teenagers work, since we can start working at that age. As said in this article, some of us hold part-time jobs,
some drive, and pay taxes, and seventeen year old teens even serve in the army. The why can't those who work and pay taxes vote?

At schools, there are school governments with the same idea of a normal government, except that they are run by students. If teenagers can vote for something like that, then why wouldn't they be able to vote in real elections? Teenagers that are sixteen or older (maybe fifteen) should be able to vote. There should be some kind of requirements for teenagers, maybe a test or something that can prove that they are ready to vote. That would be a fair thing to do. 


After all, isn't a democracy "a government of the people, by the people, for the people", and aren't we people?