Students rebelled back in World War I against the draft because many believed the United States should not engage in a war, and there are times in our history that West Point graduates resigned their commission because they believed the U.S. was engaged in an unjustifiable war. The Constitution gives every citizen a right to dissent and the law protects that right but somehow, adults refuse to grant this same right to those who pay the greatest price for upholding these rights. The young people fight the wars and die for their country, and not the old fogeys who continually criticize everything young people do without distinguishing between good and bad. Janie is not rioting or protesting in the streets, but she is taking a matter to court, because there just happens to be some legal justification for such action. There is no language in the Constitution requiring age limitations for voting for the president and vice president of the United States.
Every citizen actually has two rights to vote.
One right accorded by the state of which he is a resident, and the other derived from his status as a federal citizen and thus granted by the federal government. And where the state can limit age qualifications for electing congressmen and senators, there is no language which gives them this right in presidential elections. We will never know until it is tested in the courts and no one has ever been curious enough to test it. Janie decided she would make the challenge in the interests of all teenagers who are presently frustrated just as Columbus decided to prove the Earth is round to a group of adults who knew it was flat and who scoffed and criticized any contrary thinking. What is gratifying and rewarding is that so many young people called to applaud her willingness to test by legal means, that which has much justification, and, which in great measure can relieve the frustrations of all the young people who are presently giving their lives and offering their heads to be clubbed for a segment of society that sits back smug and secure because of young people's sacrifices.