Unpopular Opinion: Old people shouldn’t be allowed to vote

Old people love to vote. They put on their best matching separates, pull out the electro-scooters and walkers with the tennis balls at the bottom, board buses at churches and senior-living facilities and shuffle right on in there, excitedly chirping about their right to choose — or, as is more often the case, grousing angrily at the choices the rest of us make.

And sometimes I think: Why do they even care? They’ll be dead soon.

So I’m just gonna say this out loud: There is such a thing as being too old to vote.

Generally speaking, old people have already reaped most of the benefits their taxes afforded them: Their kids have already gone through school, their homes are paid for, their economic circumstances dictated by the stock market and whatever Golden Corral coupons they can scrounge each month.

And as voting records show, they are all too eager to pull up the lever, voting against social programs that gave their families stability after the Depression, deploying the same slurs and fallacies against immigrants that were used on their ancestors three or four generations ago, tilting the tax structure to suit them at the expense of their children.

Let’s not forget that the Baby Boomers — who today make up a huge bulk of senior Americans — were handed after World War II the most potent economic engine the modern world has ever known, and they have spent the years since plundering it.

Generally speaking.

And they vote — in 2016, 70.9 percent of Americans aged 65 and over voted in the presidential election, compared to just 58.7 percent of 30-44-year-olds — you know, the ones who actually do the things that make this country and its economy move forward. And who do you think those olds voted for, anyway?

There’s probably no way to official take the vote away from old people — it being a Constitutional right and all. But we can take examples of other voter-disenfranchisement methods and apply them here. Instead of a literacy test we could demand that every voter be able to order an Uber on their phone. Instead of a poll tax we could ask every voter to do a single burpee. Or we could just start holding our elections after 7:30 p.m.

After we effectively disenfranchise senior voters, then we can start to go after their guns.