I disagree with you quite strongly on the topic of elections, I don’t see why being able to demonstrate knowledge of trivia is necessary for being able to express your political preference.
Personally, I would open it to anyone who is interested in voting may do so. There is basically no good reason against this, in my opinion.
Again, the pre-frontal cortex development stuff is as close to pseudoscience as it gets. We don’t really understand how a lot of brain function works, so the entire field absolutely reeks of phrenology to me.
Oh, and what a surprise! It’s being used to justify oppression. Isn’t that fun? Just like good old times!!
Yet more oppressive shit for no good reason.
Who fucking cares if someone knows, or doesn’t, who, or what, a legislator is? It doesn’t matter. 99.999% of voting adults might just about be able to name the President, but we don’t need them to confirm that. All they need to do is put a mark next to a candidate whom presumably they’ve heard about. Or maybe they haven’t. Who gives a shit? The important thing is that we do not exclude people who do give a shit.
The sort of tests you propose historically have been used to disenfranchise black voters, and you’re just suggesting that they be used to disenfranchise young voters. More phrenology vibes.
Your whole “private poll booth” thing is again just needless and exclusionary. Again, what’s to stop an adult child being coerced into voting a certain way, or an adult with an abusive partner, or even just housemates? All of these people and more are very capable of manipulating others into serving their interests, and yet you are only interested in abridging the rights of children. Maybe we should also force disabled people to come and vote in person, too? And if they can’t, because their wheelchair doesn’t fit, well… at least they weren’t coerced!!
I’m not convinced that we do. We think we know a few things, but a lot of what we “knew” about brains has been proven completely wrong time and time and time again. This is just the latest, wrong, thing. So yeah, phrenology. I’m not interested in it at all.
This obsession with making something which is not measurable (maturity) into something which is (number of days alive on the planet) isn’t helpful. So god knows why we add that extra hoop of “brain development” into there, it’s just yet another unknown unmeasurable.