Voting at 16 - 3 comments

Omar has an excellent article in defence of the Government's Manifesto plan to extend the franchise to 16-year-olds.

Tom Harris MP, who hosted a discussion on the subject last month, offers up a lack of enthusiasm among 16-18-year-olds as reason not to extend the franchise, predicting that few would actually use the new right. This kind of argument can't carry much weight with the Government if their plan for free theatre tickets for the under-26s is anything to go by. I doubt young people queued up to demand this policy either, but the Government feel it to be a good thing, even though very few will (be able to) take advantage of the opportunity, and others might abuse it.

Laban replies to Tom's article:

They're putting the cart before the horse. Instead of asking - 'what's the meaning of the age of political responsibility ? is it the same as adulthood ? does adulthood imply independence ?' they're asking 'how can we engage the young in politics' and 'how can we increase our vote ?’ [...]

Responsibility, in general, is accepting either the credit or the blame for choices you had the power to make, and which you were expected to make wisely - and voters exercise these choices at elections. You don't need a home, a job, or to own any property to vote. You can be someone who does their level best to get out of paying tax. You could be a fervent political activist; someone who leaves anonymous blog comments; a reader of The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, or the Express; or one who hypocritically argues against both tax rises and public spending cuts, or one who lambasts politicians for their human or political failures without lifting a finger to improve their own communities. And yet if you leave aside members of the House of Lords, imprisoned offenders, residents of mental hospitals, and those who do not ordinarily reside here, age is the sole significant impediment to voting. Political responsibility? It'd be nice to see some. The mainstream media certainly doesn't feel obliged to promote it.

Irresponsible political views, not to mention dangerous and ill-informed ones, are a fact of British political life that idealists have to come to terms with. Those who hold them didn't have to campaign for the right to vote, yet no politician talks of narrowing the franchise, as past generations have bequeathed them the right to be heard and represented. Extending the franchise would allow more people who are subject to the Government to play a part in shaping it, and if that increases the number of people who want to play a responsible part in doing so, so much the better. The wider question of citizenship and behaving ethically within this realm should also be looked at, but expecting 16-18-year-olds to adhere to higher standards than those older hardly seems fair.

One response might be to say that non-'adults', for whom parents are legally responsible, cannot be construed as having voluntarily accepted (in general) the rules of our society, unlike those adults whose presence here constitutes implicit consent. Accepting that might disenfranchise the severely disabled or terminally ill, though if that condition arose during adulthood, misfortune alone should not be considered a withdrawal of consent. Attending citizenship classes, with some kind of ceremony to accept/bestow that status, would be a solution for non-adults, which they could volunteer for as soon as they feel able to do so - and can be judged to have done so. What more should society demand of them?