Which objection would most damage the author's final sentence?
The case against lowering the voting age to sixteen usually rests on maturity: teenagers, it is said, lack the judgement to weigh competing manifestos. Yet the electorate has never been tested for judgement. Nobody proposes quizzing eighty-year-olds on policy before handing them a ballot. If maturity were the true standard, we would need a way to measure it, and any such measure would exclude many adults and include many sixteen-year-olds. The better argument for keeping the voting age at eighteen is administrative: a line must be drawn somewhere, and eighteen is familiar. But administrative convenience is a weak reason to withhold a right from people who pay tax on their earnings and will live longest with the consequences of today's decisions.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Everyone under sixteen also lives with the consequences of today's decisions
- Step 1: The final sentence uses living with consequences as a reason to give the vote at sixteen.
- Step 2: The objection about younger children shows that reason would extend too far to fix a line at sixteen.
- Step 3: So the answer is the statement that "Everyone under sixteen also lives with the consequences of today's decisions".
Answer
Everyone under sixteen also lives with the consequences of today's decisions.
Why not the others: Low earnings affect only one of the two grounds, other countries' practice is not a reason, and convenience elsewhere or voter experience does not engage the claim.
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