Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been known to float some out-of-left-field policies. But his latest idea is raising a ton of eyebrows.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur told Politico that he wanted to raise the voting age to 25 with some exceptions. “There needs to be some civic experience you need to have gone through in order to actually vote,” Ramaswamy told the outlet.
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What are those exceptions, you might ask? In Ramaswamy’s ideal world, any citizen 18 or older can vote if they’re enrolled in the military, work as a first-responder or pass the civics test given to immigrants who want to become U.S. Citizens.
We know that Black history is an endangered species, but surely someone on the Ramaswamy team had to have heard of the infamous “literacy tests” employed in the Jim Crow South to keep Black voters from the polls. Unless, of course, that’s the point.
“We have a parallel to the 60s all over again,” JoAnne Bland, a 70-year-old Black woman who participated in the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights protest when she was 11 years old, told USA Today. “Just another ploy to retain power.”
Even Ramaswamy’s staff is reportedly concerned about the proposal. Politico reported that in separate conversations, staff members expressed “discomfort with the proposal.”
To be clear, this is highly unlikely to go anywhere. For one thing, it would likely be incredibly unpopular. Ramaswamy would also have to overcome some pretty long odds to become the Republican nominee. He would then need to beat President Joe Biden in the general election and find a way to jam a constitutional amendment through.
But this plan is an interesting peak behind the curtain of some of the more troubling policies tossed around from right wingers.
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