The British government has announced the biggest change to the UK electoral system in decades, with news that they intend to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote.
Since 1969, British voters have required to be 18 or older. Before that, the voting age was 21. Allowing 16 year olds to vote is generally judged a success in Scotland and Wales for the parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff, but it’s not the system for Westminster.
Opponents claim younger voters “might” be more left-wing. Well, they “might” also be supporters of the Conservative party, the Green party, or the Scottish Nationalist Party, but so what? Other opponents say younger voters by definition don’t have the experience to vote wisely, but similar criticisms were used about women a century ago when they were given the vote, and about men 200 years ago when voting was extended beyond wealthy men and landowners.
When reporting on the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, I was at first sceptical of 16 and 17 year olds voting. I changed my mind listening to teenagers intelligently discussing their future and the future of Scotland. That year, 3.6 million Scottish voters turned out to vote and more than 100,000 of those were 16 and 17 year olds. Why should that same age group be denied their say in choosing the government and future of the whole of the UK? Besides, 16 and 17 years olds can work, pay taxes and even become parents. Shouldn’t they have some say in the future political direction of their country?
Campaigners to extend the vote to younger groups believe voting is a habit, but millions of potential British voters never get into that habit. I know men and women in their 40s and 50s who simply don’t see the point of voting at all. That’s why about 40 per cent of potential British voters simply don’t go to the polls. Australia tried to fix this problem by making voting compulsory, but forcing citizens to do something – rather than persuading them to do it – seems evidence of democratic failure.
More positively Australia makes voting easier, allowing absentee voting, pre-poll voting, postal voting and other schemes. In British general and local elections, I always vote by post. It’s easy to register and avoids identity checks at the polling station. It also avoids the bad weather or transport problems that may discourage some voters.
Yet the core problem with non-voters in Britain cannot be solved merely by extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds.
Across most British political parties, there is recognition that the antiquated “first past the post” system is unfair and unfit for the complexities of the multi-party 21st century. The constituency in which I live has a Labour MP, but more than half the voters in last year’s election voted for someone else. For those voters – the majority in my constituency – going to the polling station seems a “wasted vote” because of that antiquated system.
And they have a point. In the May 2015 general election, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party won 3.8 million votes and the Green party won 1 million votes, but UKIP and the Greens ended up with just one MP each. A million votes for the Greens and just one MP? Nearly 4 million votes for UKIP and just one MP? Is that democracy?
Expanding the franchise to younger voters before the next election – scheduled by 2029 – may be worthwhile, but it’s tinkering at the edges. We need more education in schools about the importance of voting. We need non-partisan education for teenagers about how politics and government actually work. We need what in some countries is called “media literacy” teaching, to help teenagers decode what newspaper and broadcast journalists are telling them, and to question whether that information is merely opinion or truly based in fact.
A healthy democracy is one in which engaged voters go to the polls with clear ideas about why voting matters and can understand the difference between bold political promises and what governments can actually achieve.
The idea of votes for 16 year olds grabs headlines. It may be useful, and so too are some other minor changes being considered by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. These include automatic registration for new voters, expanding the kinds of voter identification that are acceptable, tightening the rules on political donations and addressing potential problems about foreign governments interfering directly or through proxies in British elections.
But even with all of that, the core problem remains. The UK does not have one electoral voting system. It has a mixed bag that includes proportional representation and separate parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – but not in England. There are votes at 16 in Scotland and Wales, but not right now for all UK general elections to Westminster.
The hard truth is that most politicians privately know that the antiquated British electoral system is wildly out of date. The problem is that once those same politicians get into power, they suddenly become very reluctant to change a system that managed to get them to the top.
