Seeing as we are seriously going to do this Electoral Law Review, let’s argue it out.
Lowering the voting age to 16 – hell yes, now!
Let’s go through all the arguments.
Taxation without representation is a classic and it has weight. Lots of 16 and 17 year olds have jobs and are paying tax but without any political representation. That is an incredibly powerful argument for Democrats and those arguing against lowering the voting age don’t have much intellectual or philosophical counter weight to this prescient point.
One counter is that teenagers frontal lobes haven’t developed enough yet and as such 16 & 17 year olds don’t have the maturity to vote.
While it is certainly true that teens don’t develop frontal lobes until their mid 20s, we are talking about sudden panic moments in young peoples lives like fighting or boy racing or racing off in police pursuits, that criticism can’t be extended to teenagers ability to reason or understand the world around them!
What is the suggestion here? Teenagers will panic at the voting booth and murder everyone in an epic melt down over not being able to take a selfie while voting?
The third argument is that this is self serving for the Left. I think that is garbage. Allowing people over 80 to vote leads to very biased results!
Young people are dealing with climate change, allowing them a political voice and by bringing them into politics earlier builds the franchise of democracy no matter who it benefits politically (and I would argue it benefits older people right now)!
Broadening the franchise of Democracy is the goal and allowing our teenagers to have a say would force politicians to listen.
If politicians aren’t going to listen, they won’t get their vote!
What more democratic is that?
I say yes to lowering the voting age to 16 and welcome a new generation of citizens into the great debate that is democracy!
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
No! Why? Because they’re all mental!
They don’t have life experience!
They don’t listen to their elders!
They have no understanding on NZs political history!
There brains haven’t developed properly!
They are not mature enough because the have a lot of “Hate” and anger toward other generations and people that do not agree with them!
And most of all, a majority of them still live at home with a mum or dad or both.
Also they’re mental. Did I say that?!
And they’re not paying taxes or contributing to society. Most may or may not even have Level 1 NCEA.
Too true Denny. https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3177
You correctly chastise police car chases of teenagers citing teenage underdeveloped brains in terms of risk assessment and judgement.
Then you promote giving the same age group, also as yet inexperienced in so many life skills and life situations, the privilege of voting.
Well then, why not drop it to 12 yrs.
Hear hear Richard Christie.
Nope, too young! Should stay at 18. Sadly instead of having decent political choices and decisions the woke come back to worrying about voting and voters to try and rally their support, after alienating their voter bases.
Also should have to be a NZ citizen to vote here and live in NZ for 5 years continuously and be fully tax resident to vote here.
What is going on in NZ, in other countries could be called electoral fraud such as cherry picking certain demographics for visa processing or at the very least bribes to certain demographics. Chinese votes for National while Labour then puts through their own bribes, and gang votes for Labour. Woke votes for Greens. All of which is extremely damaging going forward as it encourages group spokespeople to ‘sell’ votes for policy and give government money generously to certain causes.
aka from wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
Immigration law may also be used to manipulate electoral demography. For instance, Malaysia gave citizenship to immigrants from the neighboring Philippines and Indonesia, together with suffrage, in order for a political party to “dominate” the state of Sabah; this controversial process was known as Project IC.[10]
Meanwhile the normal folks seem to be leaving NZ for real jobs. Sad that Australia is now considered a better place to get ahead if you are a professional than NZ who gets the 501’s back instead.
no way.
Those over 80 have a lifetime of experience to bring to the table . Those I met up with through Lions and U3A are well read and up with current events . Young people deserve the time to enjoy growing up before they are asked to make big decisions like who to vote for. I think it would be better to go to 20 .
Much too young 16 for the reasons espoused by many contributors above.
Raise the voting and driving age to 21.
I reckon 41! 🙂
There’s a couple of points people tend to overlook.
Firstly, lowering the voting age to 16 does not mean every 16 year old has the right to vote. As elections are held every three years, by my calculation the average age of the first time voter would be 17.5 years, and a range of 16 to 19 years.
Secondly, I don’t believe many 16 year olds would bother to vote. Those that did, would probably be well schooled in civics and understand that their inheritance could be at stake, and vote far right.
If you want electoral reform, why not look to the ancient Greeks, who could cast a vote by inscribing in a piece of clay those who they wanted banished from the state for 10 years. Called ostraca, these allowed the populace to remove (ostracise) the potential tyrants and sociopaths that seem to infiltrate politics today and even going back 2500 years.
We would be better served with the power to remove these people from society rather than give them a vote of support.
Could a 16 year old stand for Parliament under this system…if not, why? If the answer is “don’t be silly”, then why are we thinking about this?
Agree Nathan this is a silly argument put forward by silly people
Food for thought. Apparently the age of reason is 7 years. Also Out of the Mouths of Babes often come surprising wisdom. Considering most people vote emotionally and/or selfishly what’s the difference? I haven’t seen much evidence of rational thought when it comes to how people vote and I’ve been voting since the 1970s. So if a selfish 16 year-old wants to vote for the environment I don’t have a problem. If we use the argument that full frontal lobe development must be present for voting eligibility then people would not qualify until they were 25 years of age. Shall we change it to that? My understanding of the teen problem is mainly concerned with the ability to assess risk. That, combined with a thrill-seeking personality gives boy racers. You should see how good they are at their craft including maintaining their thrashed vehicles. As an aside, why not give them the means to have their fun in a safe vehicle and environmental instead of crushing them.
Yes Pragman, there’s a good argument for raising the voting age – not lowering it.
Yes we needs people’s minds to become good and polluted before they can vote aye.
Add to that. There are a lot of very unreasonable people over the age of 25.
Perhaps we could get radical and introduce a means test?
Increase the voting age to 57 & bar anyone who attended a single sex school, had their affluent parents buy their house for them or obssesses over pronouns.
Comments are closed.