Vote young and vote often

Tuesday newsletter: I do not believe 16 year olds should get a vote. I believe they should get two of them

I do not believe 16 year olds should get a vote. I believe they should get two of them.

We have been doing such a dismal mess of protecting their future from global warming and such a dreadful job of making the home of their future even remotely affordable that I think they should be offered an outsized influence.

I feel that the people with the greatest number of years lying ahead of them should have the greatest say about the preparations, if any, being made for them.

I jest, but only a little.

I do absolutely think they should be given a vote.

If we are prepared to let them behind the wheel of something that can travel at more than 200 K, the question of whether they can be entrusted with some important responsibility has already been comprehensively answered.

Might they disqualify themselves for want of clear thought, or petty small-mindedness, or incapacity to focus, or general fecklessness? I have hosted talk radio. I have observed these failings in very many people of very many ages.

If you should say, as Paul Goldsmith did this morning, that things are fine just the way they are I would say: that is the mating call of the conservative, forever contented with the familiar, forever resisting the possibility that we might heaven forbid, make things better.

I think of all those high schoolers and their climate strikes, and a 22 year old Chloe Swarbrick running an audacious mayoral campaign, and Greta Thunberg buying none of the bullshit and I think: that is the kind of engagement you hope for in a democracy.

The question is being framed as: too soon? But there’s a strong case to be made that 18 is too late.

In The Conversation today Nick Munn describes the lift in participation rates seen on young voters since Austria lowered the voting age a decade and a half ago.

One theory is that 16- and 17-year-olds are often in more stable situations than 18- or 19-year-olds – still in school, usually still living with family. When they are allowed to vote, they are more likely to be supported or encouraged by their family and school.

A strong indicator of whether someone will vote is whether they voted the last time they had the opportunity. Given more young people vote when offered the chance earlier in life, a lower voting age will result in higher levels of lifetime voting. 

It is much easier to care about politics when you are allowed to participate in it. Lowering the voting age will give young people more reason to be invested in their political system. 

Over time, this will make our democracy stronger and more legitimate.

This of course, all assumes that the the exploration of the idea isn’t derailed inside 48 hours by our predilection for polarised political side-taking. Which would make leave the politics to the grownups ring all the more hollow.