16 candles and a ballot? As America gets ready to choose a president, some young people are pushing to lower the voting age for the first time in four decades.

• Author: Potenza, Alessandra
• Position: ELECTION 2012

In 2009, city budget cuts forced the layoff of dozens of teachers and the elimination of several classes at Lowell High School, in Lowell, Massachusetts. That didn't sit well with some Lowell students, who decided to do something about it.

First on their agenda? Winning the right to vote in the city's municipal elections so they could help choose the school board.

Three years later, after intensive lobbying by the students, a bill to lower the voting age from 18 to 17 in Lowell's elections is being debated in the Massachusetts State House in Boston. (Although the U.S. Constitution says 18-year-olds must be permitted to vote, states can set a lower voting age, even for presidential elections, at least in theory.)

If the bill passes, Lowell will become the first city in the U.S. where 17-yearolds can vote in municipal elections.

"Seventeen-year-olds are being affected by city council and school committee every day, and they don't really get a say in it," says Carline Kirksey, 17, who has been pushing for the bill. "It's not fair."

The last time the voting age became a big issue nationally was in 1971, when 18-year-olds were being deployed to the war in Vietnam three years before they were old enough to vote. The ratification that year of the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, giving 10 million more Americans the right to vote.

But now some countries are opening their polls to even younger voters, prompting discussion in the U.S. about whether it should follow suit. In 2007, Austria became the first country in the European Union to adopt 16 as the voting age for all elections; Brazil and Nicaragua did so in the 1980s. Germany and Switzerland allow voting at 16 in some local elections. And in Great Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron is considering whether to allow 16-year-olds to vote in the referendum on Scotland's independence that is expected to take place in 2014.

In the U.S., 19 states allow 17-yearolds to vote in primaries or caucuses if they will be 18 by the general election in November (see map). And in recent years, Iowa, Michigan, and California have considered proposals to lower the voting age in local or statewide elections.

This year, the National Youth Rights Association, a group made up of young people from around the nation, launched "Votes for Youth," a grassroots campaign to push for a national voting age of 16. It is planning Election Day rallies at polling stations in Florida, Minnesota, Pennsylvania...