Votes At 16
Tom Harris isn't keen on lowering the voting age to 16.
8 Jan 2012, 13:45
16 or 18?
Alex Salmond’s proposals to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in the independence referendum has resurrected the arguments about lowering the voting age across the UK.
Despite there having existed for decades a general consensus on the age of majority being 18, those of us who want to maintain that threshold stand accused by some of perpetrating perhaps the greatest crime in this age of Instant Gratification: asking people – especially young people – to wait for something. “Wait? Why should we wait for something we want? We want it now and therefore we should get it now!”
But let me compound my crime by adding to it, and suggest that there are occasions when it’s okay to say no, even if it means being less popular with some.
Heresy, indeed…
The vast majority of the world’s democracies have chosen 18 as the most suitable age at which to cast your first vote. Democracy being democracy, it’s not perfect and there will always be those who complain. But it’s probably about right and the vast majority of our planet’s citizens (those who get the chance to vote, anyway) seem relatively happy with the situation, if they ever pause to give it any thought at all.
Unlike the case of the suffragettes (with whom vote-less 16-year-olds are laughably and absurdly compared), there’s not an awful lot of appetite among the “disenfranchised” themselves for a lowering of the voting age. In the last ten years I have received a total of exactly zero letters from under-18s in my constituency demanding the right to vote. At present, 18-25-year-olds are less likely to vote than any other demographic; there is every indication that putting 16- and 17-year-olds on the electoral register will simply reduce the overall per centage turnout, even if it raises the total number of those casting a vote.
Let’s remember, first of all, that we don’t tell 16-year-olds (as we told women in the past): you can never vote. We tell them to have patience, to wait a couple of years just like everyone else has had to. It’s a vote delayed, not a vote denied.
And to those who say it’s patronising to deny the vote on the basis of an arbitrary age limit, I would reply: yes, you’re right. All voting age limits are, by definition, arbitrary. There are undoubtedly plenty of people who have the vote who either don’t use it or who use it unwisely. And there are certainly plenty of young people who could argue rings round some of their elders when it comes to politics. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and wherever you draw it, it’ll annoy some people.
It comes down to subjective judgment – and it’s a judgment shared by the overwhelmingly huge majority of democratic countries: 18 is probably about the age when you can be expected to cast your vote sensibly, considering all the relevant issues that might affect your decision. And sixteen is probably a couple of years too young. Not specifically. Not as it applies to every individual. But generally.
But, the argument goes, we can already have sex, get married, join the armed forces (although not actually fight), work and pay taxes at 16 – why can’t we vote? And that’s a fair argument which has to be addressed.
I know of no-one who thinks that it’s ever a good idea for a 16-year-old to have sex, let alone get married. But what’s the alternative? Make it a criminal offence? Jail teenagers who choose to sleep together? Birds being birds and bees being bees, it’s going to happen, whatever the law says. So let’s be pragmatic about it and make sure the law doesn’t get involved in what is already an intensely personal and pretty fraught subject. The law – and society – doesn’t declare: “Okay, you’re 16 now – go forth and procreate!” It says: “Well, if you must…”
But a pragmatic legislative approach to teenage hormone development doesn’t necessarily mean that the right to vote automatically follows. Similarly with the right to get a job and the inevitability of paying taxes. The battle cry “no taxation without representation” was never intended to apply to school leavers who haven’t yet reached the age of 18. Slightly more serious and consequential issues were at the core of that debate, such as the permanent denial of democratic rights to this country’s working (and tax-paying) classes over centuries, and the lack of democratic representation of British colonists across the Atlantic who were nevertheless expected to fund the British Crown through their labour.
Now, if young people were legally obliged to work at that age, or forced to enlist, then it would seem a grave injustice not to allow them to vote. But they’re not.
There are different age thresholds for different activities: marriage, driving, drinking, voting. It’s not neat and tidy, but that’s because each of the relevant laws were considered in isolation, and for a very good reason: there are different risks, responsibilities and rights to be considered in each case.
That will be frustrating to a depressingly small minority of 16-18-year-olds. But have patience: the right to vote is an important one, and it’s worth waiting an extra couple of years for.
Comments (9)
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Quite right! But you haven't addressed the real issue of the slippery Salmond's attempt to rig the referendum.
08/01/2012 14:18"I know of no-one who thinks that it’s ever a good idea for a 16-year-old to have sex"
I can think of several million 16-year-olds who disagree with you.
08/01/2012 15:00"I know of no-one who thinks that it’s ever a good idea for a 16-year-old to have sex"
I can think of several million 16-year-olds who disagree with you.
The serious argument, of course, is that extending the franchise makes sense because the only people likely to use it are those who are relatively mature and interested in politics. Most 16-18-year-olds probably won't bother to vote if given the right, and that's fine. But plenty of young people are intelligent at 16 and 17, so why not engage them?
And that's before we even get to the principle of "no taxation without representation", which is in fact every bit as serious a concept as Suffragism, despite Tom's sneering. If you're 16 you can be working full time and paying income tax, and at that point you're absolutely entitled to decide a say in the running of the country.
08/01/2012 15:04Spammo - intelligence is irrelevant.
Most teenagers and I include myself, think they know it all. They have strong views but not the maturity to realise that the world is grey, not black and white.
Stating this lack of maturity is not me patronising them but a simple biological fact and a simple fact of them having had virtually no 'real world' experience.
Let's be honest, most of us are not mature enough to decide who runs the country at 18, bugger 16!!
08/01/2012 15:28But as Tom says, you have to have a cut-off age of some kind and to lower it from 18 to accommodate a tiny minority of 'engaged' 16 year olds is another example of liberal political correctness running roughshod over plain common sense.
Jerry - quite right, and I have: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL-1gU99S4U&list=UUnWobjDa9uA70nocYLhR8cw&index=7&feature=plcp
08/01/2012 16:47"Most teenagers and I include myself, think they know it all. They have strong views but not the maturity to realise that the world is grey, not black and white."
That goes for an awful lot of people over 18 too - and indeed over 20, 30, 40 and 50 - but we still let them vote.
"But as Tom says, you have to have a cut-off age of some kind and to lower it from 18 to accommodate a tiny minority of 'engaged' 16 year olds is another example of liberal political correctness running roughshod over plain common sense."
Why? Why is it stupid to let people who want to vote, and who may well work and pay taxes like any other adult, vote? What's the downside?
08/01/2012 17:13Spammo - my concern, which you seem to share, is that there are a lot of people eligible to vote whose lack of maturity, closed mindedness and general ignorance makes them wholly unsuitable to vote at all.
However, we are where we are and I don't think a call for the voting age to increase to 25 coupled with pyschological and intelligence tests are likely to get very far.
That's no excuse to make the matter even worse by including children into the voting system, however engaged they are and even if they have left school and got a job. They can wait, get some proper life experience and then vote like the rest of us did.
09/01/2012 16:31If senile people can not only vote but can be gainfully employed in the House of Lords, 16 year olds should have the vote.
11/01/2012 15:22And then Alistair parachutes in with a risible ageist glurge.
12/01/2012 23:08