Saturday 27 October 2007

Underage Voting

From the BBC News:

Proposals to lower the voting age to 16 have been unanimously backed at the SNP annual conference.

Can someone give me a reasonable argument why 16-18 year olds should have the vote? Without the cry of "no taxation without representation", because by that argument any under-16 who buys a sweet should have the vote too.

Come on, who's of that age group? Leave comments on WHY you want the power to vote for government? Why do you think it is important? If you don't want the vote, why not?

2 comments:

Louis Scott said...

Im less inclined to think that 16 year olds should get the vote. This is mainly because I think that most teenagers including me are simply not educated well enough on the parties who we should allegedly be voting for.
I believe that most teenagers of 18 barely know who to vote for let alone 16 year olds.

Louis

Duncan said...

Having worked out in some schools, Louis, I was surprised by the maturity of some students (3rd-6th year), and started to wonder if age has anything to do with it.

In generations past, people fought for democracy, and the government built a "land fit for heroes". Do we take it all for granted now? What would stir up the mix and get people voting again? If age isn't an issue, but maturity is, how is that measurable? You can't start excluding citizens from voting if they are immature.

In some countries voting is mandatory. Here it isn't. I don't know if any country has a good balance as I haven't traveled much.