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Published: Wednesday, 17th March, 2010 4:00pm

Votes at 16, say campaigners

by Adam Hewitt

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WOULD more people vote if they got into the habit earlier?

Campaigners for Votes At 16 certainly think so and say it is unfair that 16-year-olds can get married, join the Army and have children legally but cannot vote for who represents them.

Reading Borough Council is one of just a handful of local authorities in the country to back the national Votes At 16 campaign, a coalition made up of more than 40 youth organisations and electoral reform groups.

Last year's Youth MP Olatunde Seye and his deputy Lavan Rajmohan persuaded the council's Cabinet to support the idea, and returning officer John Painter formally registered the council's position with the Youth Citizenship Commission.

Mark Mills, an Oxford University student originally from College Road, east Reading, became the youngest candidate to stand in a Reading council election in 2007 at age 18. He now campaigns for Votes At 16 and said the barrier between childhood and becoming an adult is "blurred", adding: "Someone turning 16 gains the legal right to marry, leave school and take up full-time employment. It is the age where it becomes legally possible to become independent of your parents. We should always err on the side of democracy and there are no convincing reasons to deny potentially independent individuals the vote."

Mark Whiley, chairman of Reading Liberal Youth, the youth and student wing of the Lib Dems, said: "At 16 you can marry, have children, be sent abroad to die for your country. You'll pay taxes to the government coffers and find you have little unemployment protection should you get a job, yet you can't vote a decision which fundamentally affects all these areas of your livelihood.

"Just like their adult counterparts, young people are becoming more and more disinterested in Westminster, but there's plenty of student activists getting involved in environmental and human rights causes with loud voices and strong convictions. We must give an equal opportunity to the 16-18 age group and on the back of a low and ever decreasing voting turnout, prioritise encouraging more young people into the democratic process."

In some Scottish elections, 16-year-olds can already vote, including to elect members of Health Boards which oversee the local NHS. It is party policy for the Green Party, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party, and Labour has promised to include it in its next manifesto after Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed the idea.

Political scientist Dr Alan Renwick, from Reading University, warned that the campaign could backfire unless more first-time voters can be persuaded to turn out.

He said: "The evidence is that lowering the voting age to 16 and doing nothing else would reduce turnout. That's partly because the younger you are, the less likely you are to vote.

"It's also because whether you vote when you first have the right to vote has quite a strong influence on how likely you are to vote later on in life - you get into habits or either voting or not voting. So if you have the right to vote when you are young and therefore unlikely to use that right, you are more likely to get into the habit of not voting throughout your life."

But he said combining votes at 16 with better citizenship and politics teaching in schools could boost turnout and improve democracy.

British Youth Council campaigns vice-chairman, Jack Rowley, said: "Young people's ideas on how to revive the UK political system must be listened to by the Government and all parties if they are serious about keeping first-time voters engaged with democracy ahead of this year's General Election and beyond."