CLAREMONT, Calif., April 8 (AScribe Newswire) -- Once again, young people are being sent off to fight a war by representatives of an electoral process that systematically prevents young people from representing themselves.

The Vietnam War prompted the passage of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1971, which lowered the voting age to eighteen. Proponents at the time argued that our draftees were being forced to fight and die for their country while being unable to vote.

It is past time to consider an amendment to the Constitution's minimum age requirements for representatives to the House, Senate, and Presidency - at 25, 30, and 35, respectively - which perpetuates an antiquated age discrimination that cries out for latter-day reform.

Initially the Framers of the Constitution were not going to include any minimum age requirements. James Wilson argued against them. James Madison says offhandedly in Federalist 62 that advanced age requirements would afford representatives with greater "information and stability of character." But he offers no further argument to back his 18th-century prejudice. Surely today we recognize that such structural constraints violate a fundamental principle of representative democracy: Let the voters decide such matters for themselves!

The benefits of opening up the representative system to all eligible voters would far outweigh any possible costs. Many of our voting-age youth have evidently withdrawn their energies from the electoral system. The 18-24 year old voting rates have declined steadily from 1972 to 2000. 50 percent of the 18-24 yr. old voters cast a ballet in 1972; only 35 percent of the same group voted in 2000. Opening up the competition for congressional offices could invigorate the system at all levels. Imagine if younger candidates could by-pass the entrenched party hierarchies that reward life-long insiders and gray-haired hacks.

Moreover, many of our most pressing political, economic, and cultural conflicts in the coming years are inter-generational. Militarism, environmentalism, global warming, budget deficits, health care, stock market investment, the future viability of Social Security are all hot-button issues that look quite different as assessed from short-term versus long-term perspectives. But the system is clearly rigged in favor of old folks. The demographics of the United States are now also skewed heavily toward an aging population. The AARP has become a powerful lobby. Young voters, however, cannot even run for federal office or elect one of their own. They should be allowed the minimal right to compete for office or the chance to elect someone who speaks directly on their behalf.

The arguments against repealing the Constitution's blatant age discrimination are no longer credible. Some people are likely to cling to a by-gone era of elderly noblesse oblige: older representatives can and should be entrusted with looking after the nation's future. But such condescending paternalism will only exacerbate youthful cynicism about American democracy.

Others might contend that the whole political system is liable to become more callow and reckless. The 1968 cult film, "Wild in the Streets," portrayed a horror-scenario in which drugged-crazed youth take over Congress and the Presidency as a result of lowering the voting age. It didn't happen then; it wouldn't happen now.

Nor would this measure lead toward a silly, slippery slope of requiring that underage children be allowed to vote and run for office. It would simply assert that no voting-age adult citizen be denied the chance to run for federal office, so that the Constitution no longer features a two-tiered or graduated system of citizenship (the residency requirements, preventing recently naturalized citizens from running, are also discriminatory but are less stringent and vicious).

College students on my campus, I can report, feel locked out of their government. Last week, 27 women students from the Claremont Colleges posed nude on Marston Quad spelling out the word "PEACE" to express their views about the war in Iraq. I could do my civic and professorial duty and instruct them to write their elected representatives instead, but I'm no longer sure I can offer that political advice in good faith. For their age cohort, contacting or voting for representatives seems to be an equally empty or desperate gesture. They might as well try to get what attention they can by taking off their clothes. But their Constitutional exclusion from representative government should be seen - by all of us - as a more embarrassing display.

- John Seery is Professor of Politics and Chair of the Politics Department at Pomona College. He is the author of "Political Theory for Mortals: Shades of Justice, Images of Death" (1996) and "Political Returns: Irony in Politics and Theory from Plato to the Antinuclear Movement" (1990).