Compared to, since you ask, the members of the student council that I elected when I was 12. Maybe you have had worse experiences for than I with elected student council representatives (my country has a different school culture and my grade happened to be one of the best to go through my school.) Or perhaps you have more respect for your current elected representatives. But for my personal experience the difference between national elections and school council elections is largely that the former has a larger body of sociopaths to select from so has stronger selection effects in that direction.
More generally the comparison I make is similar to Churchill’s:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
But they don’t need to be. The point of starting off very small is that the damage they can do is proportionally small. When we let teens learn to drive, we expect them to be significantly worse than the average driver, and they are, but they have to start at some point.
We already let 12 year olds vote for student council. The results are not encouraging.
We let adults vote in federal elections. I’m not especially impressed with those results either.
Compared to what?
Compared to, since you ask, the members of the student council that I elected when I was 12. Maybe you have had worse experiences for than I with elected student council representatives (my country has a different school culture and my grade happened to be one of the best to go through my school.) Or perhaps you have more respect for your current elected representatives. But for my personal experience the difference between national elections and school council elections is largely that the former has a larger body of sociopaths to select from so has stronger selection effects in that direction.
More generally the comparison I make is similar to Churchill’s:
But they don’t need to be. The point of starting off very small is that the damage they can do is proportionally small. When we let teens learn to drive, we expect them to be significantly worse than the average driver, and they are, but they have to start at some point.
The upside of letting teens drive is that it’s easier for them to get from place to place. Whereas expanding the vote is purely zero sum.