Teaching controversial issues
Voting age: reduction to 16
This resource provides information and arguments around the current debate about lowering the voting age to 16.
Use the links on the right to navigate these pages.
Introduction
Do young people of this age know enough about politics yet? And if they could vote, can they be trusted to do it sensibly?
Although most young people of this age are not actively campaigning for the vote, there is nonetheless a young people led campaign under way to extend the age of voting to 16–18 year olds.
However, with most 18–24 year olds not using their vote, many will say 16 is too young and that it is even possibly dangerous to change things in this way.
These materials reflect the current concerns, including some that have been aired recently in Parliament.
Arguments seem to cluster roughly around three questions:
- Young people are tax-payers and are old enough to take on a range of adult roles, such as marriage, parenting and full-time employment so are they not old enough to vote?
- Are young people of 16 mature enough to vote? Do they yet have enough understanding of the world to make sense of politics?
- Will they take their responsibility seriously enough if given the vote?
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