Should voting rights match a person’s legal responsibilities?

"Sweden's government has said that they want to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 in serious cases such as violent crime." This is an extract from one of the Topical Talk lessons. If voting rights match a person's legal responsibilities, does that mean a 13-year-olds should have a right to vote now?

I strongly believe that voting rights shouldn't match a person's legal responsibilities.

First of all, I'd like to talk about what legal responsibilities actually are and how only knowing that can't mean that it's enough to be able to vote for the nation. Basic legal responsibilities such as not committing murder, theft, or violence are fundamental moral principles that most young people can understand. However, simply understanding basic morality can't determine if someone is mature enough to make such a decision like voting and evaluate political policies.

Some may say that if someone is old enough to face serious legal consequences, they should also have the right to make serious decisions such as voting. However, I believe that the reason governments are lowering legal responsibilities is for the protection of young people because there are a lot of criminal networks using children under 15 to commit serious crimes since they can't be prosecuted as they have not reached the age for legal responsibility yet. If we go back to the situation of Sweden as an example, even the Prime Minister of Sweden mentioned that lowering the legal responsibility age was to protect children being ruthlessly exploited by criminal networks to commit serious crimes while confirming to lower the age of legal responsibility according to BBC.

Additionally, according to research from Cambridge university published in Nature(2025), a human brain may still be undergoing a period of rewiring until the age of 30s depending on the person, meaning that their brain may not achieved 'adult mode' which contains stability and maturity. How would the voting age be given to a 13-15 years old just due to a legal responsibility which is only based on fundamental moral principles when even a 30 years old human brain may not be in a mature state yet?

To sum up, legal responsibility and voting rights serve different purposes. Lowering the age of legal responsibility is a protective legal measure, not a declaration of full political maturity yet. Therefore, voting rights shouldn't automatically match legal responsibilities.