Votes at 16, say campaigners

Adam Hewitt • Published 17 Mar 2010 16:00 3 Comments

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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."

Have your say. Post a comment on this article.

Paul
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Mar 19, 13:29
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I doubt it will make any difference; they'll just learn earlier how undemocratic our electoral system and way of governing is. What we really need is total reform of the electoral system AND the way Parliament and Councils work.

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Howard Thomas
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Mar 19, 19:18
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Spot on Paul....our so called 'democratic ' system is any but.....The FPTP system that allows a government to have a massive majority despite polling only 30 odd % of the votes.

The unelected 2nd chamber is obscene, together with the way that the government of the day seconds Lords into high positions in government. Essentially the PM can elevate his 'mate' to the Lords, and then use their services in high government office, without a single vote cast!

Just for once I'm with the council thinking.....old enough to work/pay tax/get married must entitle a person to a vote!

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Maurice Frank
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Apr 10, 09:28
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aged 41, was lucky to turn 18 11 months before the 1987 election but if the age was either 16 or 21 I would have missed a Euro election by 3 weeks. I was the only respondent to the votes at 16 consultation who backed the American school reformer John Holt's view that there should be no voting age at all. Children are not exposed to any physical or medical or sexual danger by voting, and I first learned what elections are aged 5, at the first 1974 election.

I just proposed to Votes at 16 and Demos and the Suffrateens of Staffordshire, that they could actually help the wronged 16-17s this time. they could hold an unofficial poll specially for them.

Personally I would include under-16s too, but anyway there is this age group who you are backing. Granted the voter identity won't be as secure as in the proper election and there is the problem of how widely known your poll would be, but that is the system's fault.

You could do it by having 2 envelopes, similarly to a proper postal vote. In the first you put your name and address to identify you are a real person, then inside it would be a smaller second envelope with your ballot sealed inside, and (observed if possible) they would separate the sealed ballot from your identity before opening it. The ballot would have to be in a form where you write what you like on it, either a party's name or a known candidate's name, and the name of your seat, so it requires some local knowledge by the voter. This will be good proof of their intelligence actually!

The voters in the Speaker's seat, who also get oppressed, cheated of their right to a normal party contest, would in this poll be free to cast the party votes they would have in any other seat, and make a point about that mediaeval injustice as well as the age one.

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