LONDON: The British government said Thursday it plans to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in general elections, a landmark change giving the UK one of the lowest voting ages worldwide.
It follows a pledge from the ruling Labour Party to make the shift ahead of winning power last year, and is among several planned changes to the democratic system, which some argue is “in crisis” due to low turnout among other issues.
The voting age change is likely to prove contentious, with critics previously arguing it is self-serving as newly-enfranchised teenagers are seen as more likely to support the centre-left Labour party.
“I think it’s really important that 16- and 17-year-olds have the vote, because they are old enough to go out to work, they are old enough to pay taxes, so (they) pay in,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.
“And I think if you pay in, you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on, which way the government should go,” Starmer added.
The government will have to bring legislation before parliament, where it has a comfortable majority, to make the changes.
Only a small number of countries allow 16-year-olds to vote in national elections, according to online databases.
They include Austria — the first EU country to lower the voting age to 16 when it made the shift in 2007 — as well as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba.
Labour ministers in the United Kingdom insist the change is intended to “modernise our democracy” and boost turnout, while aligning general elections with the existing voting age for elections for the devolved regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales.
Other planned changes include introducing automated voter registration — which is already used in Australia and Canada — and making UK-issued bank cards an accepted form of ID at polling stations.
It follows changes to the electoral law introduced by the previous Conservative government which required voters to show a photo ID, which the Electoral Commission found led to around 750,000 people not voting in last year’s election.
Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of the Institute For Public Policy Research think tank, said the changes were “the biggest reform to our electoral system since 1969”, when the voting age was lowered to 18.
He noted lowering the voting age and introducing automated voter registration could add 9.5 million more people to the voter rolls.
“Our democracy is in crisis, and we risk reaching a tipping point where politics loses its legitimacy,” he added, backing the changes.
