16 & 17 year olds to be given the vote

[Whereishenow]

Just seen this announcement on BBC now. Amazing news!!! Now we just need to try and get youngsters out USING those votes.

The younger you are the longer you will live with the consequences of the decisions the government makes right now. Because of the post-war baby-boom seniors vastly outnumber any other generation and they largely vote for policies that benefit them, but hinder younger generations from getting their lives on the rails.

I think 16 is old enough to have an opinion on politics and definitely old enough to vote. At 16, most are already making decisions towards their own futures when it comes to their education, so why not let them vote too?

Okay doll 🫶

Why does it matter that they will still be at school? Depending on the time of year of any election, many if not most 18 year olds who have the vote currently will still be at school or a further education college.

The idea that the human brain isn't "fully developed" until 25 or whatever is complete bullshit with no actual basis in science though.

This is ridiculous! The ones with no jeapordy of voting in the wrong party are the old! They have their pensions, their homes and they will potentially not be around to see the mess!

And yet the idea was in a manifesto voted on by.... nobody under 18.

So who is being brainwashed, exactly?

You weren't so concerned about people being disadvantaged by compulsory voter ID.

In Scotland and Wales, fringe parties have not benefited, the whole point of the plan is to widen democracy, there is no guarantee how people who are 12 and 13 now will vote in 2029.

Scottish law does not "support rapists". I've read some mind-numbingly vapid things on here, but this takes the biscuit.

So you did your "research" and concluded there's no proof. Ok then, that's it academics, might as well retire because @Fetaface from Mumsnet evidently knows best.

Absolutely it does. If there is no punishment because they didn't know rape was wrong because they are kids then that gives the green light to rapists.

If something isn't punished then that supports the criminals, right?

Better than you reading one sentence and nodding without any more reading. Bet you believed Wakefield too because he said it so it must be true.

I agree with this because I was working and paying tax at 17 but couldn't have an opinion on how the tax I paid was spent etc.

No reason to bring it up in a thread about voting ages then, is there?

If we're going to work on brain capacity, we should have tests for dementia regularly and debar everyone past a defined stage. My mother had the vote for years beyond the point when she was actually capable of making a rational decision about it, because no-one got around to making any formal assessment of her capacity let alone told the electoral registration officer. If I had wanted to, I could have easily applied for a postal vote on her behalf and used it myself, she would never have noticed.

Perhaps if you evidently don't understand what "support" means.

And no, it doesn't give a "green light" to rapists.

I think the young should have a stake in society but this is so muddled with our other age laws.

When other people do so as an argument for not lowering or even raising the voting age, there is a reason to point it out.

Absolutely it does. It empowers them.

Are you saying that if we said all 17 year olds could rape without punishment it wouldn't change the amount of rapes that happened by said 17 year olds?

Absolutely it would.

From AI :

"While brain development continues beyond childhood, it is generally understood that the brain reaches near-full maturity around the age of 25. MRI studies have shown that while some areas of the brain continue to develop into early adulthood, major structural changes like increases in white matter volume and the refinement of neural connections continue until around this age."

Unless you are an MRI physicist of course.

And then you can objectively see that the brain hasn't developed completely physically until you are about 25 years old. Whether it has developed enough, or whether it is fully cognitively developed is another issue.

It may be possible to glean some extra information from fMRI.

Are you saying that if we said all 17 year olds could rape without punishment it wouldn't change the amount of rapes that happened by said 17 year olds?

No, and neither does the outcome of a real life court case.

Ah yes. The famous neuroscientist. Chat GPT...

I’m broadly in favour in principle. My ds should now (just) get a vote at the next election. I think it’s a travesty that that age group didn’t get a Brexit vote as it clearly affected them the most of all.

however there are lots of 16 year olds I know who are worryingly clueless. Though I suspect they will be just as clueless at 18

i agree this is probably good news for Mr Farage, which is worrying

No, what happened is that the studies around brain development stopped at the age of 25.

"Despite its prevalence, there’s no actual data set or specific study that can be invoked or pointed at as the obvious source of the claim that ‘the human brain stops developing at age 25’.

It could be a misunderstanding, stemming from brain scanning studies which looked at subjects up to the age of 25. But that’s like saying sprinters can only run 100 metres at most after watching the 100m final at the Olympics. The limit is imposed by the context, not biology."

https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-development

Probably best to rely on the words of actual neuroscientists rather than AI.

I keep reading that the brain doesn’t mature until about the age of 25.

Why would they be given the vote? 🙄

As would a five year old...

Yep. Those damned experts again.

An AI chatbot is not an expert on anything.