My instinct is to think that 16 year olds generally don't have the maturity to make these kinds of decisions.
At the same time I'm not sure their choices would be any less intelligent or mature compared to the current crop of voters.
bell-cot•2h ago
> ... their choices would be any less ...
Particularly at the top end - where myriad medical issues make competent, informed voting virtually impossible for many.
silisili•2h ago
Agreed. Feels like it would be rather wise to figure out a generally agreed upon upper and lower limit, and snip it on both ends.
But we both know that every party will accuse the other of cheating, voter disenfranchisement, possibly even racism, based on how each age bloc votes. Seem's in the US at least, we're probably stuck with what we have.
bell-cot•2h ago
True. But I'd love to see the reactions, if disenfranchising the elderly was proposed as a pro-natalist measure.
CamperBob2•2h ago
Agreed on both points. Whatever is going wrong in society these days, lowered levels of voter maturity isn't the answer.
That's not an old man's opinion, but a former 16-year-old's.
xnx•2h ago
> lowered levels of voter maturity isn't the answer.
In the US, I can see letting 16 year olds vote bring up the average level of "maturity". Older voters brains have been too cooked by watching decades of Fox News.
CamperBob2•2h ago
As a USian I can't say anything about the UK, but here, apathy seems to be at least a big a problem as immaturity. We re-elected a traitorous felon because people couldn't be bothered to vote for a candidate who didn't "inspire them."
At some point we have to decide whether democracy is a means to an end -- a stable, peaceful, prosperous, just, and exemplary society -- or an end in itself. Lowering the voting age certainly serves the latter goal.
olddustytrail•2h ago
This is for general elections in the UK overall. Scotland lowered the voting age to 16 for Scottish elections in 2016 (appropriately!) and Wales for Welsh elections in 2020.
Both countries failed to fall apart from this measure :)
scarface_74•1h ago
No they voted for him because he was and still is giving them exactly what they want. He is very much a reflection of a large part of America.
jkestner•1h ago
It’s not like most 16yos will vote. Getting them engaged is a good thing.
Who among them will? I’d guess the most engaged and the most based (for lack of a better word), so probably not much difference from the current electorate, except that youth skews left.
CamperBob2•1h ago
except that youth skews left.
That's one of those time-honored political truisms that turns out to be based on... not much of anything. Trump made massive inroads with younger voters this time around.
It's all about outreach (and, in the US, Christian youth evangelism.) It's the stated goal of the American right(1) to dismantle public education precisely for that purpose.
Given they will inherit the mess being created now, I think the only moral choice is to allow 16 year olds to vote so they have a say in the future and ban anyone over about 65 or 75 from voting.
They’re retired, not paying taxes and will not live long enough to fully reap the results of their vote. Society is not theirs anymore.
mbrumlow•2h ago
If you are going to use the inherit argumenT, then why not 14 or 9?
I keep hearing that the human adult brain is still growing and changing until they are 24. It almost makes more sense to raise the age.
Most 18 year olds have not held a job, ran a hose hold, had a kid, managed other people, lives on their own, bought a house, or even own a car. But yes for the sake of “the will inherit” we should allow people with a childlike understanding of the world to sway votes of emotion void of logic.
There is a case of lowering the max age. As they could potentially sway votes for only ultra short term reasons.
giraffe_lady•2h ago
> If you are going to use the inherit argumenT, then why not 14 or 9?
It's a good question. It doesn't seem correct, but I can't find any argument for having it at 16 or 18 or 21 that doesn't also apply for having it at 14 or 9 either. But having it at 25 or 30 based on development smacks of disenfranchisement and eg jim crow literacy laws.
It's not a question I think we can get a satisfying answer for through a scientific-medical model. An 18 year old is still developing, but is also still capable of making informed decisions. So to a lesser extent, is a 16 year old, and to an even lesser extent a 9 year old. And adults who for any reason are less intellectually sophisticated still have the right to vote, which again is a matter of societal values not medicine.
Looking at cultures through history, the timing of transition from childhood to adulthood, the rituals that mark it, the responsibilities that accrue with it, that's really what we're talking about here. The age varies quite a bit across time and place (and different groups may have different reasons for placing it where they have settled on, as do we) but 14-20 probably catches the majority of when most people would consider this change to have taken place. And 16-18 may be pretty much the median? I don't want to assert it too strongly but probably anything within these ranges is "fine" with certain tradeoffs one way or another.
testing22321•1h ago
18 is arbitrary anyway.
The whole point here is to get young people involved and have them feel they actually have a say and the ability to steer the ship away from the rocks it is about to slam into.
michael1999•49m ago
If the senile and the crazy can vote, why not 16-year-olds?
duxup•2h ago
I'm not convinced voters are good at voting for their own interests anyway.
scarface_74•1h ago
People keep saying this like the American voting public is dumb. They (I am a US citizen) knew exactly what they were getting and wanted it. They would rather suffer as long as they “own the libs”, have a government that is hostile to non straight, non White people and Isreal is protected so Jesus will have some place to come back to (no exaggeration).
No I don’t have a personal opinion on Isreal either way. I don’t know enough and I’m sure there is more nuance than I’m aware of.
scarface_74•2h ago
But they can be trusted to be behind the wheel of a 2 ton car going 70+ mph?
It’s just like an 18 year old can be drafted, legally carry a weapon, but not drink in the US (even though many do).
dehrmann•1h ago
Most of the electorate doesn't, and not like the worn partisan joke.
Look at any mainstream candidate's website and how they talk about issues. They never go into the depth and complexity of a problem; they just make it a talking point. Any informed voter would read these high-level blurbs and think this candidate has no idea how things actually work. Yet they somehow win.
Candidates dumb down policy discussion for voters because it wins elections.
Eavolution•1h ago
On the other hand take something like Brexit, that went into effect well after the referendum on it. There are a significant amount of people who would have opposed/supported it who were 18 when it went into effect but not when it was voted on.
squidbeak•1h ago
The young were always going to be the big victims of Brexit, so excluding them from the referendum was disgusting.
vouaobrasil•1h ago
> My instinct is to think that 16 year olds generally don't have the maturity to make these kinds of decisions.
My instinct is that people who are 40+ and who are financially secure shouldn't be voting either, because they will likely vote for tax breaks for the rich, and other things that help make their unsustainable lifestyle even easier/lazier.
squidbeak•1h ago
It's a fair use of their vote if those are the issues most important to them. You can't disenfranchise people because they oppose your interests, not in a democracy.
vouaobrasil•59m ago
My only point was that they probably make as stupid decisions at 16 year olds, so if they are allowed, 16-year olds should be allowed to vote as well.
drewcoo•1h ago
> My instinct is to think that 16 year olds generally don't have the maturity to make these kinds of decisions.
Well _my_ instinct is to think that anyone who disagrees with me is equally unable to decide, grampa.
CamperBob2•1h ago
You don't need "instinct." We have peer-reviewed, highly-reproducible scientific studies on brain development.
michael1999•48m ago
We also have similar for age-related decline. My dad is facing vascular dementia at 90.
If the senile and the crazy can vote, why not 16-year-olds?
CamperBob2•45m ago
"There's already a forest fire across the road, so nobody will care if I toss a cigarette out on this side" is the sort of idea I might have embraced myself... at 16.
michael1999•49m ago
If the senile and the crazy can vote, why not 16-year-olds?
lttlrck•2h ago
It will be interesting to see how electioneering adjusts to encompass this now important demographic that has massively different priorities than even 18 years olds.
This seems like a good thing to me.
Fizzadar•2h ago
Thrilled Labour actually followed through on this. Especially as the population ages we need some balance to the hordes of retirees voting right so they can keep their oversized homes and ludicrous triple lock at the expense of young people.
Now where’s the age cap?
userabchn•2h ago
As I have gotten older, I have come to believe that the current voting age is already too young. I thought I was right about things when I was 18, but with more experience I realise how naive I was.
fnordsensei•1h ago
On the one hand, it’s their future. On the other hand, a fully developed prefrontal cortex is handy in order to make it a good future. On the third hand, that’s still no guarantee against people voting against their own self-interest.
dehrmann•1h ago
I don't think this is a good idea, but it's fun to toy with the idea of weighting votes by life expectancy, maybe with intellectual maturity as a second factor. It's interesting that the vote of someone who has a handful of years left counts the same as someone who has to live with the consequences of the election.
ThrowawayTestr•42m ago
I think only people that pay taxes should be able to vote.
duxup•3h ago
At the same time I'm not sure their choices would be any less intelligent or mature compared to the current crop of voters.
bell-cot•2h ago
Particularly at the top end - where myriad medical issues make competent, informed voting virtually impossible for many.
silisili•2h ago
But we both know that every party will accuse the other of cheating, voter disenfranchisement, possibly even racism, based on how each age bloc votes. Seem's in the US at least, we're probably stuck with what we have.
bell-cot•2h ago
CamperBob2•2h ago
That's not an old man's opinion, but a former 16-year-old's.
xnx•2h ago
In the US, I can see letting 16 year olds vote bring up the average level of "maturity". Older voters brains have been too cooked by watching decades of Fox News.
CamperBob2•2h ago
At some point we have to decide whether democracy is a means to an end -- a stable, peaceful, prosperous, just, and exemplary society -- or an end in itself. Lowering the voting age certainly serves the latter goal.
olddustytrail•2h ago
Both countries failed to fall apart from this measure :)
scarface_74•1h ago
jkestner•1h ago
Who among them will? I’d guess the most engaged and the most based (for lack of a better word), so probably not much difference from the current electorate, except that youth skews left.
CamperBob2•1h ago
That's one of those time-honored political truisms that turns out to be based on... not much of anything. Trump made massive inroads with younger voters this time around.
It's all about outreach (and, in the US, Christian youth evangelism.) It's the stated goal of the American right(1) to dismantle public education precisely for that purpose.
1: https://civilrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Project-2...
testing22321•2h ago
mbrumlow•2h ago
I keep hearing that the human adult brain is still growing and changing until they are 24. It almost makes more sense to raise the age.
Most 18 year olds have not held a job, ran a hose hold, had a kid, managed other people, lives on their own, bought a house, or even own a car. But yes for the sake of “the will inherit” we should allow people with a childlike understanding of the world to sway votes of emotion void of logic.
There is a case of lowering the max age. As they could potentially sway votes for only ultra short term reasons.
giraffe_lady•2h ago
It's a good question. It doesn't seem correct, but I can't find any argument for having it at 16 or 18 or 21 that doesn't also apply for having it at 14 or 9 either. But having it at 25 or 30 based on development smacks of disenfranchisement and eg jim crow literacy laws.
It's not a question I think we can get a satisfying answer for through a scientific-medical model. An 18 year old is still developing, but is also still capable of making informed decisions. So to a lesser extent, is a 16 year old, and to an even lesser extent a 9 year old. And adults who for any reason are less intellectually sophisticated still have the right to vote, which again is a matter of societal values not medicine.
Looking at cultures through history, the timing of transition from childhood to adulthood, the rituals that mark it, the responsibilities that accrue with it, that's really what we're talking about here. The age varies quite a bit across time and place (and different groups may have different reasons for placing it where they have settled on, as do we) but 14-20 probably catches the majority of when most people would consider this change to have taken place. And 16-18 may be pretty much the median? I don't want to assert it too strongly but probably anything within these ranges is "fine" with certain tradeoffs one way or another.
testing22321•1h ago
The whole point here is to get young people involved and have them feel they actually have a say and the ability to steer the ship away from the rocks it is about to slam into.
michael1999•49m ago
duxup•2h ago
scarface_74•1h ago
No I don’t have a personal opinion on Isreal either way. I don’t know enough and I’m sure there is more nuance than I’m aware of.
scarface_74•2h ago
It’s just like an 18 year old can be drafted, legally carry a weapon, but not drink in the US (even though many do).
dehrmann•1h ago
Look at any mainstream candidate's website and how they talk about issues. They never go into the depth and complexity of a problem; they just make it a talking point. Any informed voter would read these high-level blurbs and think this candidate has no idea how things actually work. Yet they somehow win.
Candidates dumb down policy discussion for voters because it wins elections.
Eavolution•1h ago
squidbeak•1h ago
vouaobrasil•1h ago
My instinct is that people who are 40+ and who are financially secure shouldn't be voting either, because they will likely vote for tax breaks for the rich, and other things that help make their unsustainable lifestyle even easier/lazier.
squidbeak•1h ago
vouaobrasil•59m ago
drewcoo•1h ago
Well _my_ instinct is to think that anyone who disagrees with me is equally unable to decide, grampa.
CamperBob2•1h ago
michael1999•48m ago
If the senile and the crazy can vote, why not 16-year-olds?
CamperBob2•45m ago
michael1999•49m ago