A campaign to lower the voting age to 16.

• Author: Rosenberg, Miranda
• Position: Voices

The beginning of my sophomore year, my dad asked me to sign a tax form for the $30 I owed the government as income tax on my part-time job. It didn't seem right to me: If I'm paying taxes, shouldn't I have a say in the system I'm paying into? This is taxation without representation!

In theory, I've got representation via my parents, but there does not seem to be much we agree on lately. So why should my voice be silenced just because I am some 550 days shy of 18?

I decided it was time for a change. In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the national voting age to 18 from 21.

I found out that states have the power to lower the voting age, but there are no states in which all 16- or 17-year-olds are allowed to vote.

In Florida, citizens can petition to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot, which can be approved by majority vote. If I can collect 488,722 signatures (8 percent of the number of Floridians who voted in the last presidential election), the voters will decide whether to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote. And since I live in a state where voters last year approved a constitutional amendment that protects pregnant pigs, an amendment lowering the voting age does not seem quite so foolish.

So where does that leave me right now? Faced with the daunting task of collecting nearly half a million signatures. As of December, I've got about 2,000. Media attention has helped me gain recognition, but it has not collected signatures for me.

I've gotten lots of people to sign at local colleges and political groups. I've also created a Web site, VoteAt16.com, to make the petition available for...