News

 turnout of 16- to 17-year-olds in the Vienna elections was estimated to be 64.2% and thus significantly and substantially higher than the turnout of 18–20-year-olds, which was 56.3%. In Krems turnout of 16- and 17-year-olds was 56.3% and substantially higher than turnout of older first-time voters (46.3%)

Are People More Inclined to Vote at 16 than at 18? Evidence for the First-Time Voting Boost Among 16- to 25-Year-Olds in Austria

In Germany you can also vote in most elections at 16. And you can also vote for the European Parliament with 16. I think that is good, since the people who are currently young will be most affected by many of the decisions taken now. It also recognizes that the young people are also important and encourages political participation from a young age. And nobody is forced to vote, so people who are disinterested in politics will just note vote.

Dunno. Those older people don't seem to be doing such a great job either. See the current us and, yes, Brexit, if it's more relevant.

I know nothing of UK Law, but this smells of justification for a future draft at 16y law.

People under 25 already rarely vote. It's not going to change as much as people might want I bet

Not only is it good, I don’t think it’s enough.

Your vote should be weighed with an inverse relationship to age. That is: the older you are the less your vote should count. Older people who are closer to death have an incentive to vote for short-term gain over long-term improvements. This is how we got into the climate crisis, the world is being ruled by reheated corpses who don’t give a crap about the future.

Uh, what?

I'm 53 and a lot of my peers are fucking stupid but allowed to vote. On a radio station here in the UK the main argument against was that they would be influenced by tiktok...

....as though people my age aren't influenced by fucking Facebook.

I mean they also have the perspective of having more of a need to be concerned with the distant future than those who are currently represented.

I had just turned 17 when the gay marriage plebiscite happened in Australia. I still remember the anger I felt at not being able to vote on my own right to marry.

I was more naive then than I am now, but I also was at twenty.

Many experts assert that a 16-year-old has sufficient cognitive and critical thinking capacities to make political decisions independently.xi Giving adolescents a voice and allowing their participation in matters that affect them through voting would also help fulfill a developmental need for agency and autonomy, which are core developmental tasks in adolescence.

LOWERING THE VOTING AGE: UNICEF Canada Policy Brief

You know John Adams once said that poor people, who didn't own property, and women shouldn't be allowed to vote because clearly they didn't know enough about politics and would just be advised and do whatever those with property said.

Well that applies to most voters

Well, I deal professionally with people involved in politics, as well as voters. I can assure you the average adult voter is just about as poorly informed as the average 16 year old, if not more so. At least a 16 year old will have had a recent lesson on politics and civics in general.

Frankly, there should be an actual test before you should be allowed to vote. Some people are so completely misinformed about the process that they do far more harm than good.

There are plenty of grown adults who know even less. I'm all for younger voting ages.

Yeah, I think keeping it at the legal adulthood makes sense.

When I was 16 I’d have voted Conservative, so clearly I wasn’t informed either. Just cause you and I weren’t switched on to political and societal issues doesn’t mean many teens aren’t.

Yes. Let's not do anything else at all until climate change is solved. Then we can start on habitat loss and do nothing else until that's solved, and then we can exclusively start to sort out microplastics before moving on to concentrating totally on water pollution. Oh hang on, climate change has started again. Better drop the work on pollution and go back to that. Hang on, kids, we'll be with you around the year 5832.