25? Really? I go back to the draft eligible age of 18. If you can die in war as part of the military you should be able to vote for those that send you off to war.
People who are advocates of as many people voting as possible wouldn't like Deezestan. I believe in the right to vote, but I also think it's possible to abuse your right to vote with ignorance. That should be curtailed through reasonable means, because when one abuses his voting rights, it hurts other people and not just in their preferred candidates losing. I'll admit that a big reason for this is that I've practiced law in front of some very unqualified judges who only held their offices because some very ignorant people voted for them based on their names and nothing else. I've seen injustice done to real people because some judge got elected by having a cool name, like "Kenneth Law" or a bunch of rednecks liking the name "Green" better than the name "Garcia."
Let me take this back to the 18 years old vote. I'm aware of the "old enough to die for your country; old enough to vote" rationale, but to be honest with you, it's more of a slogan than a genuine rationale. As you're well-aware, we didn't apply this until 1971. This wasn't a serious issue during WWII or previous wars. This was a political consequence of Vietnam far more than it was a real principle on which the merits were debated and considered.
In addition, if the "old enough to die for your country" rationale was the real rationale, then why didn't the authors of the 26th Amendment actually apply that rationale? Millions of people who aren't draft eligible are still covered by the 26th Amendment. Furthermore, the Selective Service age is statutory, not constitutional. That means Congress could decide to draft 15 year olds tomorrow. Will those people be allowed to vote? No. Why not? Because "old enough to die" was a false premise.
Finally, why do we restrict voting based on age? We do it because we assume that people younger than a certain age are too immature in terms of priorities and uninformed to vote. It's going to be unfair to some. There are undoubtedly 15 year olds who would make perfectly responsible voters and 30 year olds who are terrible voters, but we simply don't have time to sort all that out every election, so we generalize and draw arbitrary lines. It's legalized age discrimination - pure and simple.
Well, I think that having mature priorities and motivation to become informed usually comes with life experience and assuming responsibility for oneself and others. I use the word "usually" because again, we're generalizing. Are people generally becoming more mature and more responsible at a given age than they were in 1971? Or 1945? I don't think so. Accordingly, I'm less deferential to a younger person's voting rights today than I would have been in 1971 or 1945.
Would you also have an age cap for voting? 70 maybe? The elderly tend to be just a misinformed as the disinterested youth.
Actually, the elderly are some of the most informed voters in the electorate. I don't necessarily agree with their priorities, but they are very well informed. Look at who volunteers for most political campaigns. They're pretty much always over-represented, and if we're talking about local races and even state races, it's almost entirely a bunch of old people.
So no, I wouldn't restrict voting on the basis of old age. Now, if someone has actually been adjudicated to be mentally incompetent by a court, perhaps I would, but that would be the case regardless of the person's age.
I fully recognize that this issue was put to bed before I was born, and once you give somebody voting rights, there's no disenfranchising them later if it doesn't turn out well. It's pretty much an irreversible move, so don't think this is a serious priority for me.