Alik Schier, a 17-year-old junior at Woodrow Wilson High School, finished classes on Tuesday and ran to the D.C. Council. He snagged a front row seat, and waited to see if the bill he’d been working on for the past year would pass.
Instead, lawmakers didn’t even take an up-or-down vote, opting to table the legislation instead.
The Youth Vote Amendment Act of 2018 would lower D.C.’s voting age to 16 for all elections, including mayoral and presidential races. It would make the District the first jurisdiction in the country to allow 16 and 17 year olds vote in all elections, rather than just local ones. Takoma Park is one of a handful of jurisdictions locally and around the country that allows teenagers 16 and older to vote in local elections.
Even though it is a major blow for the bill—the looming end of the Council’s two-year session means that the measure will likely have to go through the legislative cycle all over again—Schier says this isn’t going to hold him back from mobilizing 16 and 17 year olds to get the right to vote.
“I think this setback energizes us even more,” he says. “We’re still showing up. We’re not going anywhere … We’re really excited to finally bring this home.”
Schier is a youth spokesperson for Vote16DC, a local coalition of teenagers, adult allies, and organizations that has been campaigning for D.C. to lower the voting age to 16. It is a branch of Vote16 USA and Generation Citizen.
The coalition has been working with Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who introduced the bill in April of this year along with six other councilmembers. On Nov. 1, the bill passed through the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, which Allen chairs, on a 3-0 vote.
But on Nov. 13, the Council narrowly voted to delay voting on the legislation.
Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans first moved to table the bill at the Committee of the Whole, which failed by one vote. But he succeeded at the legislative session, citing “significant unreadiness.” Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, the youngest councilmember, provided the swing vote.
“To the young people here, we’ll keep working on it,” Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen said during the meeting. He has not yet responded to a request for comment about the next steps for the bill.
After the Council’s decision, DCist spoke with students involved in the campaign to see where the movement is headed.
“I was somewhat disappointed, however I’m not looking at this as a loss,” says Julian Smith, a 17 year old who attends Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy. “I’m looking at this as a learning experience. So from what we saw in the meeting, it only taught us what we need to do: work harder to make sure it gets passed.”
He says that the Vote16DC program has made a significant impact in his life, giving him real world experience with politics.
“I don’t really consider this as heavily as a setback as you might,” says Smith, who lives in Ward 6. “It’s just something we have to overcome and persevere past. This teaches us more about what we need later in order to get the bill passed.”
QueSton Bell is an 18-year-old senior who also attends Chavez and lives in Ward 5. When DCist spoke to him earlier in the week, Bell mentioned that he was inspired to work on the campaign by his grandma, who lived through the Civil Rights movement.
“I think the relationship with my grandmother and her support is not going to waver,” Bell says. “With any kind of suffrage, it didn’t get passed in the first try. It was diligence and taking setbacks and finding a way to work around these setbacks.”
Just like Smith and Scheir, Bell says the Council’s decision only serves as motivation for him to work harder.
“I’m not looking at it as a negative thing,” Bell says. “I’m looking at this as a force of motivation because we’ve already put so much time and hours into this campaign that this will not stop us. It will be a reason for us to work harder.”
Monae Scott, a 17-year-old student at SEED Public Charter School, believes the legislation and Vote16DC have already started to make a difference.
“I think adults are starting to open their eyes up and see that we are dedicate and we care what’s going around us,” Scott says.
Dave Chandrasekaran, the campaign manager of Vote16DC, says the next step is to meet with leaders and partners of the legislation. They will evaluate possible options to continue their advocacy work.
“Vote16DC plans on continuing to move forward, just like we always were. Even if we passed the bill today, there still would have been many other steps to go into another vote,” Chandrasekaran says. “If anything, we’re even more energized to mobilize more young people and more adults and more organizations to see the benefit of this voting age law changed. So we’ll continue into the new year if that’s what it takes.”
