Should the voting age be lowered to sixteen?

Aniqa Aslam

Voting At 16

I believe that sixteen-year-olds should be granted the right to vote. I also believe it is important teenagers are involved; otherwise, politics will be dead by the next generation. UK citizens won’t vote, join political parties or give their opinions so there won’t be any point in the UK being a democracy. Over 1.5 million sixteen and seventeen-year-olds are denied the vote in the United Kingdom. I believe this needs to be changed.

In the UK, sixteen-year-olds are permitted to leave school, work full time, pay taxes, leave home, get married and join the armed forces. If at sixteen, people become “adults” and take control of their own lives, why aren’t they deemed responsible enough to vote? This is taxation without representation; one of the same things the Revolutionary War was fought over. The United Kingdom isn’t the first country to consider lowering the voting age. Since 1984 the following eight countries or provinces have lowered their voting age: Nicaragua, Brazil, Estonia, Isle of Man, Austria, Guernsey, Jersey and Ecuador. Other countries with the lower voting age include Brunei, Cuba, Philippines (if married) and Slovenia (if employed). In my opinion the Philippines and Slovenia have the right perception because if teenagers are responsible enough to be employed or married, they should have the right to vote and have a say as to where their taxes are spent. According to a survey carried out, 55% of sixteen-year-olds have part-time or full-time jobs and 30,000 pupils leave school at this age. Also, 55% of sixteen-year-olds and 45% of adults believe that sixteen-year-olds are responsible enough to vote. In my opinion, most of this age are responsible enough to vote even if they don’t act like it. Only the responsible ones are going to bother voting so the decisions they make will be right for the UK.

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I believe lowering the voting age would have a very worthy impact on young adults as well as their families and the rest of the society because teenagers will learn and be educated about politics at a younger age. A good example is “Kid’s Voting”. This is a simulation where children participate in a mock voting, such as the one held in schools. Reports show that this activity increased the interest of voting in entire families as more parents discussed politics with their kids and were more likely to vote because of this. I would also like to point out that students are learning much about politics in school, which also helps them to make more informed decisions. I’d like to sum up this argument by saying that this strengthens democracy and helps both adults and kids to make more educated votes. This is a new incentive for the public to become knowledgeable.

Sixteen-year-olds may say they deserve the vote but are they just arguing for the sake of argument or are they truly interested in politics? We don’t know if they care about what is going on in our country or if they just feel as if they are missing out. Are they interested? The UK Youth Parliament currently has over 600 members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) and in these elections; over 1,000,000 votes were cast in elections between 2006 and 2009. In 2008, 565,802 young people cast a vote in the elections, with 1,625 standing as candidates from across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Children and Young People's Assembly for Wales currently has a Grand Council consisting of 100 young people. According to a survey I carried out, more than 60% of the students who participated thought that sixteen-year-olds weren’t interested in politics yet, only 41% of adults believed this. But acceding to a questionnaire carried out on the same students, more than 70% think that they would be interested in politics if they were allowed to vote. The majority of sixteen-year-olds aren’t interested in politics but this may be because they aren’t given the chance to get involved in politics. If they are given the opportunity to vote and have their say – like the teenagers involved in UKYP – they might grow to enjoy politics.

If sixteen-year-olds are responsible enough to vote, will their votes be beneficial, and will they make the right decisions for our country? We need to know if their younger approaches will improve the UK or make it worse. Will giving sixteen-year-olds the vote be regretted? Many public figures believe that the opinions of young adults are very important and therefore support the “Votes at Sixteen” campaigns. For example, Gordon Brown, the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, indicated in an article in The Guardian that ‘he favoured a reduction provided it was made concurrently with effective citizenship education.’ Others who support this campaign are the Scottish National Party, the Labour Party, UNISON and the Young Scots for Independence. According to a survey, 83% of adults and more than 90% of students believed their opinions were important and when asked why, they replied that while they were given the right to free speech, they should also get the chance to make some changes along with it. The opinions of sixteen-year-olds are very important, even if some adults may not think so; they should be allowed to represent the younger people of the UK. After all, they are the politicians of tomorrow and if they aren’t involved now, they may never be interested in expressing their opinions.

Even if sixteen-year-olds are given the vote, we don’t know for sure if they will use their vote. They may say they deserve them but it has to be made clear that they will use the right once they have fought for it. Also, if they are involved from a young age, they will be able to cast informed and sensible votes. Many eighteen-year-olds don’t know much about voting because it hasn’t been introduced earlier, therefore, they don’t vote or they vote insensibly. According to a questionnaire circulated among high school students, roughly 60% of 30 students were positive that sixteen-year-olds would use the vote but only 40% of teachers thought this was true. Most adults don’t believe sixteen-year-olds will use their vote because they don’t seem interested in politics. A survey shows that most people don’t become aware of political issues and the need to vote until they reach 18 but if young people knew they would be able to vote by sixteen, they would pay more attention to the country’s problems and feel the desire to vote.

To conclude, in my opinion, I have proved my hypothesis because there may be many arguments against granting sixteen-year-olds the vote but they should still be given the benefit of the doubt and have the opportunity to contribute their thoughts and opinions. If sixteen-year-olds are given the vote, they will not only represent themselves, but the entire youth of the UK. Preventing sixteen and seventeen-year-olds from expressing their political views through the ballot box gives them – and the rest of society – the impression that young people’s views are somehow not important. We should increase the diversity of the electorate because sixteen-year-olds are ready to vote and the right time is now.

“My concern is that there’s a generation of young people who are never going to get into the voting habit… we’ve got citizenship classes going on in schools... if people come straight out of the citizenship class into the polling station then there’s continuity and that might be an opportunity for them to get the habit of voting.”

- Harriet Harman MP; Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; Secretary of State for Equality

Bibliography

Daily Telegraph

R&D Magazine

The Guardian

The Independent UK

The Labour Party

The Times

UNISON

votesat16.org.uk

wikipedia.org

ycc.uk.net