 Why the voting age should be lowered to 16Tommy Peto
Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2018, vol. 17, issue 3, 277-297 Abstract: This article examines whether the voting age should be lowered to 16. The dominant view in the literature is that 16-year-olds in the United Kingdom are not politically mature enough to vote since they lack political knowledge, political interest and stable political preferences (Chan and Clayton, 2006). I reject this conclusion and instead argue that the voting age should be lowered to 16. First, I look at Chan and Clayton’s empirical claims and show that these features of 16- and 17-year-olds are in fact created by exclusionary social practices and therefore that these features cannot be used to justify their exclusion from the vote. Second, I evaluate preliminary evidence from Austria which suggests that 16- and 17-year-olds, when actually given the vote, are politically mature. Third, I show that, on a balance of harms, considering that some 16- and 17-year-olds are mature, we still should lower the voting age even if some 16- and 17-year-olds are not politically mature. I conclude that the voting age should be lowered to (at least) 16. Keywords: suffrage; voting age; youth enfranchisement; votes at 16; lowering the voting age; voting rights; children’s rights; youth politics; youth political engagement; children in democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:17:y:2018:i:3:p:277-297 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Politics, Philosophy & Economics |
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