Why would anyone think 16 year-olds should be allowed to vote?

[MsAmerica]

Be honest - think back to when you were 16. Did you have an understanding of a broad range of issues? Did you pay serious attention to national news? Okay, even many adults may lapse on the score, but still, it seems crazy to me.

In the U.S., voting age had been 21 and the only reason it was lowered to 18 was that teens were being drafted to fight in Vietnam, and it was felt as unfair for them to have no say.

Next you know, Labour will re-open the mines and send the children down.

Or is that Reform 🤔

Reform want to increase immigration.

I didn’t say it was a risk to safeguarding.

the government in England and wales has deemed a person between 16 and 18 is still a child, removed the right to marry and also to have a full time job unless linked to education. These are all fairly recent changes.
the law also prohibits them from buying alcohol, glue, knives, amongst other things.
however on the other hand the same government are now giving them the right to vote.
I can see legal cases where a young person is being kept “safe” by the state such as a PPO or EPO but it could be argued in a court of law that they are able to vote and as such should be allowed to choose their own path at 16-17.

The right to vote is very much still tied in the legal system in England and wales as being the premise of adults.

There is already so much disparity and conflict around ages within the law that I don’t see the rationale for it.

Incidently neither do my young adults…. Without any prompting from me

Mumsnet usually doesnt worry me but I find that actually hugely upsetting you saying " I'm their poster child" re drug dealers. You have no idea what my or my family's experience of drugs are. I'd suggest having some restraint when holding forth on this sort of thing. Or not. As you prefer.

Ok. I see your point and thank you for being reasonable. We will just have to agree to disagree.

How good of you to quote one sentence of my post out of context. 🙄

There IS no reason to lower the age, there is a cut off point between child and adult that is 18, voting is an adult right not a child's one. It is something children should aspire to like other adult rights and responsibilities that they gain when they are old enough. Maybe it is something they should be excited by and look forward to?

Some people on this thread give the impression that there should be no boundaries or cut offs for anything (especially the ones who think their offspring would make better decisions than many adults, the failure of adults to make sensible, considered decisions is entirely due to the way people in this country do not seem to value or in some cases even understand the democracy they have despite having access to information from other countries where the people do not have access to democratic rights and freedoms that some here just throw away.)

There can be political engagement without lowering the voting age, schools and parents should be preparing children for their full adult rights and responsibilities. We know why this is being done and it is NOTHING to do with thinking children are mature enough to make decisions with far reaching consequences.

Yes other countries have lowered the age but the few that have done it seem to usually tie it to other responsibilities. A glance at the list of country voting ages in the world would indicate that the average appears to be 18.

Some on here seem to be scoffing too at the idea of safeguarding of personal data but it is is a legitimate point to raise.

@Quirkswork

"We know why this is being done and it is NOTHING to do with thinking children are mature enough to make decisions with far reaching consequences"

Yes we do know;

this commitment was part of the labour manifesto ; they therefore have a democratic mandate to do it and it is the "will of the people". Ultimately other Adults voted for older children to have this right whether you agree with it or not....

No one has said it is. But sending a child to private school is.

It's absurd.

A luxury that also reduced costs to tax payers and now a lot of kids aren't having that "luxury" any more, the cost to taxpayers has increased. So there's now less money to spend on kids education.

It's all so confusing and contradictory and self-destructive. How can that little bit of social engineering have backfired so unbelievably predictably?

I'd put it up to 21.

I think this is getting derailed into another education tax thread. What I’m saying is that education tax makes zero sense, it’s just plain stupid and backwards. But when you link it with giving children the vote and limiting education choices for children to a system you can control then you at least begin to see what the motivation might be.
Don’t dismiss this too quickly, wait and see if some weird stuff gets introduced at state schools over the next year or so.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Education-under-communism

I think you may need to have a lie down.

Yeah yeah, let’s revisit in a year.

16 year olds tend to be naive and optimistic and lean more to the left, seems like the obvious thing for a labour government desperately clinging onto votes to do

I would revisit it too but I died 4 years ago, 6 months after having the Covid vaccine.

That’s fine. I’d imagine getting rid of voter id so dead people can vote would also be on Labours gerrymandering to do list.

Voter ID was brought in as a way of gerrymandering elections - Jacob Rees-Mogg has admitted as much. So you are wrong. There was no evidence of large scale election fraud before the Tories brought in voter ID - it was a fix for a problem that did not exist, and it was a very very recent development.

Labour has (rightly) committed to expanding the number of acceptable forms of ID, as the previous lot set rules that favoured older people and excluded the young - so we'll get some balance back.

Ha ha, I didn’t even know they were doing that. What a surprise. Can’t wait to hear the reasons behind dead people voting.

Any explanation on how state schools are indoctrinating their students, other than A Christmas Carol?

Not yet, it’s just a prediction at this point.

What are you predicting exactly? How will they be indoctrinated?

How does it usually work?

”Indoctrination is the process of inculcating (teaching by repeated instruction) a person or people into an ideology, often avoiding critical analysis.”

See critical race theory, Marxism, socialism, mass immigration, education tax, equality of outcome

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination

It is nothing to do with whether or not they had it in their manifesto, all governments are happy to ignore such promises when it suits them because nothing compels them legally to follow through on their promises.

It is clear that they think mistakenly or not that it is a way to hold power because they are proving to be a pretty useless, disappointing government in their first year (which is normally considered to be a kind of honeymoon period) even though they are up against some pretty stiff competition in recent years.