I was indoctrinated by my teachers; kids are easy to manipulate. Voting age must stay high, OR schools must be decoupled from the government. A simple voucher system.

But 16 year olds are not mature enough to decide whether they want to drink or smoke. They also should look at least 25 for that.

It's really not a great idea. Most 16 year olds know nothing about the world - they're impressionable and easily coerced by social pressure, and schools are basically state-run indoctrination camps.

Labour are assuming the majority of the youth vote will go their way, but it could backfire heavily. The youth think Reform are cool and Labour are outdated.

So would you allow five year olds to vote? You have to have an age requirement somewhere.

what about the level of dementia?

Just sounds like game to me.

- Are the merits of the change not more important?

- Couldn't you argue parties don't promote changes like this to protect their interests too?

They are not legally adults.

* They are restricted in what jobs they do, and are supposed to be either in education or doing apprenticeships or similar

* They cannot drive until they are 17

* They cannot purchase alcohol, knives and many other things

* They cannot get married

* They cannot get tattoos

Its very much that they think it will favour them. I think it might very well not do so - while they will net vote for Labour its not by a huge margin and its changing. I wonder whether the government are overly influenced by the huge margin they enjoy with privileged people in that age group - i.e. the ones they meet.

I think you're right in that Labour believe this, but that Labour are spectacularly wrong about it and have just signed their own death warrant. Young people want hope, and they definitely don't feel like Blue Labour could give that to them.

If voting intentions, results and surveys results are any indication, not fully developed prefrontal cortex will be better than demented one.

That’s not wishful, that’s straight delusional.

but could this be an impetus for quality education at a younger age.

probably not

Genuinely curious, does education really matter? No one man has the time nor intellect to effectively evaluate all the facts. Most of the lies today are lies of omission / framing. Details left out, stories not covered, etc.

The only rational position is figuring out how to scale trust. Ironically enough, the historic ways of doing that (race, religion, nation) are all more or less “evil” in modern society.

After going through US public schooling and then reading actual source material from various topics covered many years later, it’s hard to see it as anything other than propaganda. “History was written by the victors” doesn’t magically exclude our current regime.

Many eons ago I took a "General Studies" A level that had a solid chunk of political education, just googled and was disappointed to find out it doesn't exist any more.

Even still, I'd say younger people are still more politically aware (mostly via history classes that are still present in their memory) than most people of the current voting age.

No.

I'm sure I don't speak for everyone, but people consider me reasonably worldly and reasonably intelligent but at 18 when I was first given the power to vote I voted for:

* UKIP for EU Parliament

* Lib Dems for UK Parliament

I don't necessarily regret the LibDem one, but seeing how absolutely hoodwinked I was by UKIP has left me really jaded.

I saw them misrepresent issues and put things to the EU parliament for debate that they would then go back to the UK media and scream about how there was a topic up for debate that went against british values: despite them being the ones to propose it!

I saw the leader of the party get put in charge of the fisheries committee and then proceed to tell the UK public that the EU was taking control of our waters and fishing... when he was the man in charge.

I saw grandstanding and burning of our political capital inside the EU parliament for soundbites.

and I only saw this: because I was not afraid of digging into the truth of things; something I was not prepared or willing to do as a teenager, as that sounded like the kind of mundane schoolwork I was attempting to avoid - I was much more interested in how I felt about particular people, and UKIP gave me the warm fuzzies about my country and a convenient scapegoat for the decline in living standards in my lifetime.

There's a real problem with those with no "skin in the game" -- living in large paid off houses (bought for a song in the 1970s), with defined benefit pensions and the triple lock -- voting for wacky options and suffering no consequences. This is going to get worse and worse. Reducing the voting age redresses it a very tiny amount.

Are you saying they would vote with 90 year olds, to shot their own futures off?

Or that they would keep voting in the parties that overwhelmingly harm them?

If the elderly with no skin in the game are allowed to vote, then children should be allowed to vote.

To be clear, I'm ok with disallowing children to vote if we also disallow the elderly. But if one group can vote, its only fair that the other group can as well.

The whole 'undeveloped brains' thing is a myth. The brain is still developing and even then developing != deficient. As for improving the state of democracy? It seems like very much a good thing that they'll be able to have their interests represented, which is a rather stabilizing force. Especially when dealing with idiots who vote for Brexit and then think that literally enslaving the youth for the sake of 'instilling values' and calling it 'national service' is a great idea.

I think this is a good idea, given we now see how selfishly most people vote. If an 80 year old man is going to vote only for his immediate self interest and not even for his own generational legacy, then his vote shouldn't count as much as a 22 year old struggling to establish a sustainable future for themselves.

I was raised to champion the elderly for their life wisdom but it's starting to seem like society has been changing so rapidly that they no longer understand what's actually going on

Is age the right measure? Should there be periodic citizen's test (like a driver's test)?