The age limit for getting a driver’s license in New Jersey is 17. For voting, it’s 18 (unless you live in Newark and want to vote in a school board race). You also have to be 18 to run for most local offices, and 21 to run for State Assembly. But running for State Senate? To do that, you’ll have to wait until you turn 30.
That age requirement, established at a 1947 constitutional convention, is far higher than most other states around the country, which typically set a minimum of 18 or 21 years of age to run for their legislature’s upper chamber. Now, 25-year-old Raritan Borough Councilman Adam Armahizer wants the New Jersey Senate to follow suit and lower its age requirement to 21.
“[The current age limit] is an injustice to our democracy and a direct limitation on the people’s ability to elect representation,” Armahizer said. “If this is the land of opportunity, young leaders should not be restricted from the opportunity to fight for their people and for their rights within our New Jersey State Senate.”
Since the age limit is enshrined in the state constitution, changing it requires a constitutional amendment, which the state legislature would have to pass and then put before voters as a statewide referendum. (There is no mechanism for citizen-led referendums in New Jersey as there is in many other states.)
Armahizer said that he’s reached out to every state legislative office to discuss his proposal, with “mostly positive” feedback so far. State Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-South Brunswick), who has made elections reform and voting access a major focus during his time in the legislature, said that he, for one, is very open to Armahizer’s idea.
“A proposal to get young people more involved, and not lock them out of running for elective office, is one that I think we need to take seriously,” Zwicker said. “I’m always interested in things that will get more people involved in politics, and young people involved in politics.”
New Jersey’s high age requirement, which was designed to match that of the U.S. Senate, has led to some rather illogical limitations over the years.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) first won his seat in the House at the age of 27, meaning that he wouldn’t have been able to run for his own local State Senate seat for his first three years in Congress. The same goes for Peter Shapiro, who made the leap from state assemblyman to Essex County Executive in 1978 at age 26, when he would have still been ineligible to run for his own district’s Senate seat.
But even if the age limit were lowered, it might not have much of an effect on who ends up serving in the Senate. The Assembly’s minimum age is currently 21, but its youngest member, Assemblyman Cody Miller (D-Monroe), is 33; the reality is that young New Jersey politicians tend to be excluded from the upper echelons of power regardless of whether any formal limitations exist.
Zwicker acknowledged that simply changing the state constitution wouldn’t be enough to undo those unwritten restrictions, or fix the apathy many young people feel about politics – but he said that it would at least be a start.
“This is just one small thing. It’s just opening a door,” Zwicker said. “There have been decades of people being disaffected by politics, whether it’s money in politics, whether it’s feeling like their voice doesn’t matter or their vote doesn’t matter. I would never put this up there as, ‘This is going to change that.’ But anything that can incrementally have a positive impact on young people being engaged in the political system, is I think important.”