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Imagine this: a wave of underage voters flocking to the polls, tipping the balance in a gubernatorial election or a hard-fought mayoral race in which issues relevant to minors — curfew laws or classroom cooling, for example — are at stake.

That could, in theory, happen if state lawmakers pass — and Hawaii residents later vote to approve — a proposal to .

Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland intends to introduce a bill at the Legislature next session that would trigger a ballot initiative to let the people decide on whether the minimum age for voting should be on par with the minimum age for driving solo.

Chun Oakland, who helps oversee the state’s Keiki Caucus, says she’s introducing the bill to kickstart a dialogue about the state of youth civic engagement in Hawaii.

“That’s been my lifetime commitment,” Chun Oakland said, adding that she’s also sponsoring a bill that would require schools to provide voter registration forms to senior students before they graduate. “To get young people more involved.”

Chun Oakland drafted the bill at the request of Frank De Giacomo, a community activist.

De Giacomo, who has run unsuccessfully for public office in the past, says the time is ripe to expand suffrage to young people, which he describes as a pressing social justice issue. Minors should have a say in the decisions and on the decision-makers that affect their lives, he said, citing the lack of air conditioning in most of the state’s hottest classrooms and changes to school policies as examples.

“To say that they’re not smart enough to vote is pretty much a paper tiger argument,” De Giacomo told Civil Beat.

He recalled his teenage years when he was angry to be excluded from the electoral process. “Lacking input from a (youth) perspective decreases the quality of our decisions and the legitimacy of them,” he said.

De Giacomo’s argument carries echoes of the Vietnam War era. In 1971, Congress ratified the 26th Amendment, which granted suffrage to 18-year-olds. The main argument for the change was that people who were between 18 and 20 were old enough to die for their country, but not old enough to elect the leaders who sent them to fight.

Preliminary research from other countries suggests that lowering the voting age to those under 18 can boost voter turnout — an issue of particular relevance in Hawaii. Just 31 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 in the islands voted in the 2008 election, the worst young voter turnout in the country. In the 2012 presidential election, to just 30 percent. The national average was 45 percent.

Advocacy groups, including , note higher turnouts in countries that allow 16-year-olds to vote, such as , as well as evidence that . The minimum voting age is 16 or 17 in a number of countries, including Brazil, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

Past legislative efforts to lower the voting age in Hawaii haven’t gained much traction. A Senate bill in 2004 that proposed the same ballot initiative failed to get a second reading.

The difference is this time, though, is that there is a precedent in this country. In a recent election in Takoma Park, Md. — which just this year to lower the voting age in local elections to 16 — nearly 14 percent of the ballots were .

As a whole, voter participation in the municipal election was an — but given that 44 percent of registered voters under 18 actually cast ballots, the lower voting age could bode well for long-term voting trends in the city.

Still, Lyla Berg, a former state representative and long-time educator who founded , says lowering the voting age would be premature in a state that lacks a high-quality civics education program.

Berg, who also serves as Hawaii state coordinator for the Center for Civic Education’s Project Citizen, is one of the most vocal advocates in the islands for getting young people to engage more with the community and civic affairs. And while she firmly believes that young people should be empowered to make decisions and demonstrate leadership, she fears that lowering the voting age — while failing to bolster how the public school system educates students about civics — could “jeopardize” young people’s efforts to be respected.

“It really does demonstrate in a way how we respect the younger generation and how we can trust them … but I wouldn’t want to throw them under the bus,” she said. In general, schools aren’t teaching kids how to register to vote, cast ballots or think critically about current issues and events, Berg said.

The poor quality of civics education in the country has added to negative stereotypes about young people, including that they’re apathetic or disengaged, she argues, adding, “That’s very unfair … They may not have hope, but that’s not apathy.”

Berg said that the first order of business should be a community initiative within the public school system that aims to instill a passion and a true appreciation for voting in young people.

“It would essentially make voting a ‘cool’ thing for everybody — not only the right thing and an obligation, but (something) that really, really matters and is something we all feel compelled to do,” she said, adding that teachers far too often avoid talking about voting because they think it’s “political.”

But that perception, she said, is missing the point: that voting makes every individual an agent of change. “When young people feel included, even peripherally, there’s a hope that comes into the human spirit, that ‘maybe I don’t have to agree to this life that I have, maybe there’s something more for me that I can do for myself and my family,'” she said.