“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin said younger voters delivered for the Democrats in the midterms, and now Republicans want to revoke their right to vote.
“When you look at the youth voter turnout in the 2022 midterms, they delivered key wins for the Democrats,” Hostin said Nov. 14. “Younger voters aged 18 to 29, which by the way, now the Republicans want to raise the voting to age 28.”
A reader asked us to fact-check Hostin’s claim that Republicans want to raise the voting age — a claim that drew backlash on Twitter and in conservative media.
Hostin’s comment is misleading; it is merely a reference to one pundit who tweeted a call to raise the voting age to 28. Another commentator called to raise it to 21. But we found no broader effort by Republicans to raise the voting age.
Two pundits proposed raising the voting age
Two pundits who called for raising the voting age made recent headlines in The Daily Beast and The Guardian: Peter Schiff, a conservative radio show personality, and Brigitte Gabriel, an anti-Muslim activist. Both pundits have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, and an ABC News spokesperson pointed to their comments to support Hostin’s claim.
Schiff tweeted Nov. 8: “When the voting age was 21 by that age most voters were married, had kids, and had been out of school and in the workforce for 8 years. Today most 18 year olds never had a job and still live with their parents. Let’s raise the voting age to 28. If I was still 18 I’d support this.”
Schiff’s tweet included a Twitter poll and inspired an essay by novelist Dean Brooks.
The day after the Nov. 8 election, Gabriel tweeted, “Raise the voting age to 21.”
Examples of notable Republicans who agree with them are scarce.
Addison Smith of One America News Network said it made him “sick” to agree with Hostin, but “she is right! Some people on the right do want to raise the voting age, myself included.” Smith said he didn’t have a set age in mind but said, “Unfortunately I don’t think it will” change.
Nan Hayworth, a former one-term New York U.S. representative, who served from 2011 to 2013, tweeted in support of raising the voting age to 28 or 21.
Voting age was set by a constitutional amendment in 1971
It would be very hard to raise the voting age.
“That would take a constitutional amendment, since it would require repeal of the 26th Amendment,” said Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “I don’t think there’s any chance it could be done.”
An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the states request one, by a convention. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each state.
It took decades to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. The movement came after World War II, when Congress lowered the minimum age to be drafted from 21 to 18. The slogan “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” was born, according to Rock the Vote.
Calls to lower the voting age gained steam during the Vietnam War.
In 1970, Congress voted to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the voting age to 18 in federal, state and local elections nationwide. After President Richard Nixon signed the amendment into law, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Texas sued the federal government in opposition. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the power to set the age only for federal elections. That defeat in court led the Senate and the House to vote in favor of an amendment, and two months later, 38 states had voted in favor of lowering the voting age.
We found no evidence that anyone beyond a couple of conservative pundits has called for raising the voting age. We found some efforts by Democrats to lower the voting age to 16, but those proposals haven’t picked up many supporters, either.
John Holbein, an associate professor of public policy, politics and education at the University of Virginia, said some cities in Maryland and California have lowered the voting age to 16 in local and/or school board elections.
Some congressional lawmakers have proposed lowering the voting age, including Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y.
Meng, who floated a constitutional amendment, said 16-year-olds can work, pay federal income taxes, drive cars and be tried in criminal court as adults.
“If 16-year-olds are impacted by our laws, it is only fair that they be allowed to choose their representatives,” Meng said in 2021.
We wondered about Hostin’s broader comment that young voters delivered for Democrats. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University wrote in a Nov. 9 report that 27% of young people (ages 18-29) turned out to vote in the 2022 midterm election. These young voters supported Democratic House candidates by a wide margin: 62% to 35%. (The numbers could change once states finish counting ballots.)
This 2022 youth turnout is probably the second-highest rate for a midterm election in the past 30 years, behind the 31% turnout in 2018, the center found. Ballots cast by young people made up 12% of all votes in this election, nearly matching the 13% youth share of the vote from the 2014 and 2018 midterms, according to National Election Pool surveys.
Our ruling
Hostin said, “Republicans want to raise the voting to age 28.”
Hostin did not elaborate on which Republicans want to raise the voting age. ABC pointed to news coverage of a tweet by a conservative radio show personality, who supports raising the voting age to 28.
Although Hostin didn’t single out lawmakers as sharing this view, her broad comments left the false impression of a serious proposal being in the works.
We found no such effort beyond the tweet. We rate this statement False.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.
Sunny Hostin
Statement: “Republicans want to raise the voting to age 28.”
© Copyright (c) 2022 Austin American-Statesman
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Looking at how DUMB KIDS these days are, i actually AGREE.
LETS RAISE the voting age to 25, since 18 yr olds, CONTINUALLY PROVE how stupid they are, year after year… Even when they supposedly graduate higher education, they are STILL OFTEN Dumb as a box o rocks…
“Looking at how DUMB KIDS these days are, i actually AGREE…Even when they supposedly graduate higher education, they are STILL OFTEN Dumb as a box o rocks…” ltuser.
Which is just what the Dem/Lib Progressives have purposefully cultivated over the last several decades.
Starting in College, then dipping down into the high schools, to now starting in grammar schools and even pre-schools. They want their indoctrination to begin as soon as possible.
They do not want intelligent citizens, they want compliant subjects who will bow to the latest whim the Authority bestows upon them.
That is why the battle will be long and arduous. We have generations of mind control to counter, and every year a new crop graduate and effect the World around Us and Our way of life.
We need to change things if We are to again be the Country We were meant to be.
It won’t be impossible, but it will be difficult, as the last two elections have proven.
As hitler (or was it stalin said), GIVE me the kids, and the Roots of what i sow, will be hard to ever unearth. or something like that.
The number of one’s I.Q. is much more important than the number of one’s age, especially when it comes to selecting the best leaders. Alexander The Great rose to power at age 22, and conquered the world by age 30, including Afghansitan where he married Roxane. Unlike Joe Biden the weak, who lost Afghanistan in less than a year, because the married the mob. Emotional mobs make poor chosers, when they get beguiled to pick lost losers, whose I.Q.s they would never reveal BEFORE the election but are always revealed in their failures AFTER the elections.
Let’s turn the Left’s logic back on them…
Right now, we have to be 21 years of age to purchase alcohol, cigarettes, to play in a casino, etc, and if the gun-grabbers have their way, we’ll have to be 21 in order to purchase the firearm of our choice. Ask any leftist and they’ll tell you we need to raise the age to buy a gun, as we did with alcohol, cigarettes, and to gamble, because, well, a 21 year-old is more mature than someone younger.
Following this logic, shouldn’t we raise the voting age back to at least 21? I’d actually suggest 26 – reason: Insurance folks will tell you that people under the age of 26 (typically guys, more than women), are more likely to be involved in serious, oftentimes fatal, auto accidents, more than their older peers, precisely because they’re less mature, take more risks, etc.
If you can’t smoke, drink, gamble, etc, till your 21, because you’re, ostensibly, more mature, shouldn’t this same logic apply to the vote?
Which would you rather have, a more mature, better-informed citizenry, or a nation run by mere “children”?
I know which one I’d choose.
Plus, as GUN OWNERSHIP IS A right by our constitution, IF IT is just/ok, for that right to have so damn many hoops to jump through, WHY THE HELL, then is voting, which is also a right (only gained by the 16th or was it 17th amendment), NOT ALSO LIMITED!!!
“The View Falsely Claims Republicans Trying To Raise Voting Age”
One would have to be not too bright and/or a Democrat to watch or believe anything from the “View:.
The the 26th Amendment states:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
End of conversation.
indoctrination is the new norm.
Which is why we need to eliminate the teacher unions AS THAT IS WHERE Most of it comes from.