Should the minimum age for voting be lowered to 16?

Voting in the UK and around the world

Voting Age

Most countries in the world have a voting age. The voting age in Britain has been eighteen since 1969. The law stipulates that a person of voting age is at the minimum age whereby they are eligible to vote in a public election. The average minimum age of voting in the United Kingdom and around the world is 18 years old. On 15 December 1999 the House of Commons considered reducing the voting age to sixteen; however the government opposed the amendment. When Gordon Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer he indicated that he was in favour of the reduction as long as it was inline with effective citizenship education.

Your thoughts

Here's how some Student Life message board users felt about voting rights:

• octoparrot posted: "Most 14 year olds I know don't know anything about politics. There's a reason the voting age in 18 and that's because they're more aware of politics"
• speakup posted: "I know fourteen year olds that know more about politics than eighteen year olds!"

Facts

You can vote in UK parliamentary elections once you are on the electoral register and provided that you are also:

• aged 18 or over on polling day
• a British citizen, or a Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of the Irish Republic (and resident in the United Kingdom)

Votes at 16

On 29, January 2003 a coalition of charitable and political organisations launched the campaign Votes at 16, aimed at lowering the voting age to 16 years old. As a result of the campaign the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey reduced their voting ages to sixteen. The coalition consists of the Electoral Reform Society, the British Youth Council, UK Youth Parliament and UNISON. Local councils such as Cambridge, Hastings, Eastbourne, Islington, Kent and Leeds have passed motions in favour of lowering the voting age.

Voting in other countries

The national minimum voting age in the Sudan, Indonesia, North Korea, Seychelles and East Timor is seventeen. The minimum voting age is sixteen in Cuba, Austria, Nicaragua and Brazil. Incidentally Austria was the first European country to lower the voting age in national elections. However countries such as Uzbekistan specify a minimum age of twenty-five.

Iran exclusively stipulated a minimum national voting age of fifteen, but raised it to eighteen on 18, January 2007. Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Venezuela have all proposed to reduce the voting age for the next cantonal and local elections.

Some experts insist that children should be enfranchised, demographics are changing and senior citizens are dominating the electorate. In the U.S. after the debacle of the Vietnam War Gerald Hyman, a governance expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said, "If you're old enough to be drafted and to fight, you're old enough to vote". This forced the government to lower the minimum age from 21 to 18. Critics as argue that teens are too immature and impressionable to vote, saying they simply don't have the experience to make an informed decision.