Democratic Prudence and the Youth Suffrage Debate

Abstract

I examine conflicting visions of prudence advanced during the 1942–1971 U.S. congressional debates over lowering the voting age. Suffragists and anti-suffragists agreed that college-aged youth were idealistic, willful, passionate, and impractical. They disagreed, however, over the best way to imagine the relationship between individual voter and collective electoral judgment. The suffragists ultimately constructed a vision of democratic prudence that located the telos of political judgment not in the individual citizen but in the complex interactions of a heterogeneous electorate. I consider the potential of democratic prudence for better promoting collective identification and engagement.

Key Words:

• prudence
• controversy
• youth
• suffrage
• liberalism