Should voting rights match a person’s legal responsibilities?
This post was written by a student. It has not been fact checked or edited.
I think that 16-year-olds should not vote because then around 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds could vote for the very first time (provided the law passes) and we know that our brains are not fully developed until age 26. But, at the same time, MRI brain scanning (relatively recent technology according to the BBC) scanned a twenty-three-year-old brain and apparently, they have the brain capacity of an 18-year-old.
There is a quote from Ed Miliband that I strongly disagree with: “The future of our society is going to affect young people the most, when you get to the age of 16”, he said, “you can join the army, you can get married, you can pay taxes.” At this age, most young people are struggling to decide which A-levels to study, not thinking about legal responsibilities.
In most countries, the minimum voting age is 18 and the highest is 25, supporting my opinion. 16 and 17-year-old's brains might not be ready to vote because they might not know what they are talking about as they often do not engage with the news. As for Scotland, they already set the age limit to sixteen in 2015, Wales lowered the age limit in 2021, and there are other countries that have lowered the age – but to what benefit? So that is why we should not let 16-year-olds vote; they need further development and maturity.
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