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<p>After <a href="https://steemit.com/life/@plotbot2015/while-i-was-not-looking-400-followers">this post</a> on the minor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic">moral panic</a> at my kid's school a couple days ago, I noticed this action being planned.</p>
<p><a href="https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2018/02/join-us-day-action-stop-gun-violence-schools/">https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2018/02/join-us-day-action-stop-gun-violence-schools/</a></p>
<p>A year ago I wrote a column for IGMS about experimental politics, called "Political Science is an Oxymoron,"</p>
<p><a href="http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=randall_hayes&article=011">http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=randall_hayes&article=011</a></p>
<p>where I suggested several experiments that might improve our political results. One I did not suggest was lowering the voting age, which was on the ballot in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Takoma Park, Maryland, and 20 other countries already allow this.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/13347080/voting-age-election-16">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/13347080/voting-age-election-16</a></p>
<p>And it got me to wondering. How would our democracy be different if young people could vote? How different would it be if they could <strong>run for office</strong>? My kid says his friends are way more passionate about their personal political views than college kids are, and that they would vote in bigger numbers than the college kids currently do.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fNR1dccHohEdgnBNDbZALQ5pKl0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7413723/16_youngturnout.png" width="800" height="736"/></p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fNR1dccHohEdgnBNDbZALQ5pKl0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7413723/16_youngturnout.png">[image link]</a></p>
<p>The nonprofit Generation Citizen has a middle- and high-school curriculum to drive civic participation, on a similar theory that good habits are formed early, under the influence of parents, not on college campuses, where there are other priorities.</p>
<p><img src="https://generationcitizen.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Theory-of-Change-1.png" width="1308" height="644"/></p>
<p><a href="https://generationcitizen.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Theory-of-Change-1.png">[image from Generation Citizen]</a></p>
<p>They are not currently active in North Carolina, but I am going to look into that.</p>
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