Based on the kind of person I was at 16, no thanks.
No. And I’ll explain by way of a quick example.
Every lunch hour, high-schoolers from the local comp cut across my work’s parking lot on their way to 7-11. A group of them, the same boys for the most part, laugh and sig heil each other while using their fingers to make fake hitler moustaches.
Does this make them nazi’s? No. It makes them teenagers who do something idiotic because it’s “edgy” and their peers are doing it. 16 year olds have zero concept of the real world implication of their actions. Their brains are neither fully formed enough or emotionally mature enough to vote responsibly rather than just decide to be a dick bag because it’ll make their friends laugh.
At best you’re going to end up with a lot of spoiled votes writing in Eric Cartman. And at worst, they’ll actively vote in the asshole that makes honest voters made because that’s the “edgelord” thing to do.
A lot of those same students would vote responsibly, if given the chance.
As a former high school teacher, I was very impressed with the political engagement of Gen Z. They are aware of issues and largely feel hopeless and ignored. If students could vote, schools would be an excellent place to teach students how to make an informed vote, and then take a field trip to voting centres to show them how easy it is to vote, too.
As it is, you’re partly correct that 16 y.o.s largely don’t pay close attention to party platforms, despite generally good awareness about local and global issues, but it’s because it seems useless to them since they can’t vote.
There’s also research supporting that people who vote when they are first eligible to vote are likely to become lifelong voters, and those who don’t will likely not. One of the biggest issues in Canadian politics is the demographic mismatch between voters, so “old people issues” are grossly over represented on party platforms—and fair enough that they are! They’re the only ones who consistently vote.
Lowering the voting age to 16 would be a statistical artifact on most election results, in how few ridings would actually change hands, but the knock-on effect of building civic engagement for life would be an amazing change for Canadian politics. You would be surprised with how mature 16 year olds can be when it matters.
I would rather limit voting to between the ages of 20 and 60.
80 year olds should not be voting on things that are going to effect 16 year old for the rest of their lives without 16 year old having a voice.
Civics courses should be mandatory. Misinformation should be prohibited. Politicians should be prohibited from lying.
There’s absolutely no argument denying youth the right to vote that wasn’t equally invalid when it was used against other groups. There are uncaring, naive, uninformed, and stupid people in every group, but denying the whole group is wrong. It’s also going to be inconsequential -teenagers make up a tiny fraction of the population. The main reason to do it is that voting young predicts lifetime engagement in the voting process - so limiting it is a bad idea for that reason alone.
I’ll go even further and say that anyone with the mental capacity to be able to follow the rules and instructions, maintain decorum in a polling station, and properly fill out a valid ballot should be allowed a voice in elections. That’s the same criteria we use for legal adults.
They’re a tiny percentage and then how many of them will even vote, too? I agree. Let the few who care have a vote.
Small change …
Politicians should be jailed for lying.
No objection.
90 year olds shouldn’t be voting on things that are going to affect 2 year olds for the rest of their lives without 2 year olds having a voice. That argument is kinda vague and baseless.
And likewise, why does a 16 year old get to decide how an 80 year old that can’t get to the polls should live their final days? How much OAS they get, or which healthcare they get, etc.
Those old people will die soon and the rest of that 16 year olds life they can vote for whatever selfish things they want to have too. It’s annoying to arbitrarily assume old people are just trying to fuck over the younger generation without a care when that would be wildly unpopular with basically all other age groups.
Honestly I do not think 16 year olds should get to vote. They’ve barely had a chance to have a job (legally 1 year at most) and they haven’t even applied to university or college yet. They broadly don’t know what responsibility is, they don’t know what work is, and they’re not fully mentally mature.
18 sure, life is starting to hit you then. 16 is simply too young and too inexperienced at life to put in a place to decide how we all live.
90 year olds aren’t going to vote for education, childcare, etc. They have a few years left to live. 16 year old have their entire lives to live. Look at what happened in Britain. Old people voted to withdraw from the EU which disproportionately harmed young, mobile professionals.
This idea that old people care only about themselves is wrong, and very much a young person’s view. As you get older it’s not uncommon to care less about getting things for yourself (what are you going to do with it?) and more about the people and world you’re going to leave behind. An old person who appreciates the value of education or healthcare doesn’t stop wanting that for the country just because they’re soon going to be gone.
A lot of 80/90 year olds have family they love.
I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think letting 16 year olds vote is the right move.
All 16 year olds pay into the programs that support the few 90 year olds. They’re a pyramid scheme that takes from the young and gives to the old. 16 year olds are old enough to pay taxes and they are old enough to vote.
No vote, no taxes.
Canada’s OAS and CPP are not a pyramid scheme, they’re based on what you actually put in and guaranteed.
They don’t have the solvency issues that US Social Security has.
My main point:
No vote, no tax.
I would be fine with not charging workers under 18 tax.
When I was that age saving for university wasn’t easy and staying life off with a bunch of debt and no guaranteed job isn’t fun.
I could defintely see 16 year olds voting against their best interests, such as lower drinking ages, less school years, easier school circulums. Ending school at grade 10 might sound like a great idea to a 16 year old and the mp pitching it could convince older canadians it would save a lot of taxes as well, all well significantly impacting that new generations education potential.
Is that worse than the adults in Alberta repeatedly voting in governments that allow foreign companies to take Alberta oil out of the province for fractions of a penny on the dollar while failing to put away sufficient reserve funds to clean up their messes in the province leaving those adult voters and their future children holding a many tens of billions of dollars cleanup bill?
When have those things ever been on a ballot?
no. most 16-year-olds don’t know anything. yeah yeah most people don’t know anything in the first place, but teenagers know even less.
all this is going to do is boost whatever vote their family has
18 is correct because it aligns with graduating highschool; which we’ve defined societally as the benchmark for being able to contribute to society.
The majority of contemporary civic education is in highschool not middle school as well. If we’re going to lower the voting age we need to revamp our entire school system first.
I don’t outwardly oppose the idea, but to be perfectly honest with myself I do not think I was mature enough at sixteen for my opinion to matter at a macro scale.
Some people aren’t mature enough at 56 and they’re still allowed a vote.
Honestly if you can get a drivers licence at 16 you should be able to vote too. And just because we open it up to them doesn’t mean they’ll all automatically actually do it.
Driver’s license is a weird thing to tie to voting imho. Serving in military makes sense to me though.
Given the trend of young men moving to the right, it does worry me a bit where the youth of Canada would place their vote and what the future that would create for them would look like.
Your telling me the left is gonna have to start taking young men’s issues seriously? The west has fallen
How about a compromise? Make the voting ages 24-74 Anyone 14-24 Can vote for a “Minister of Youth” who is a cabinet minister and anyone over 74 can vote for a “senior’s minister”?
Everyone gets representation and no one is subjected to the ideology of the immature or anyone who has given up on life.
I think there’s something to be said for allowing kids to participate in the political system while we still have them in school to teach them about it. Maybe it would help voter turnout rates.
I don’t know for you but the school parliament give me a pretty good lesson on the actual political landscape : elected people don’t change shit
Let’s lower the voting age cap actually. Also the age cap for holding positions in politics.
I think it could be good. I don’t think it’s a popular position, though. Everyone and their mom is ready with a personal anecdote about how they used to be lazy and ignorant in high school (they’re dedicated and informed now, though, of course) and, as we all know, all teens are the same, so none of them deserve the right to vote.
It’s a real weak excuse too, because the lazy and ignorant ones are welcome to not vote as usual, but maybe some informed students will. Of course there will also be plenty of conservative weirdos pushing their worldview on their children who will push them to also vote conservative, but hey thems the breaks.
Yeah, you’re right. But I happen to know more than a few people who push their partners and adult children to vote a certain way, too. My wife’s dad, for example.
I think some people are just pushy, and being capable of resisting that (when it’s safe, of course) is a life skill worth honing, especially when you’re still a kid and getting a lot of pressure from all sides to act in certain ways.
Everyone should be allowed to vote, as they get affected by the laws. Anyone who can comprehend how to vote, should. The only unfortunate things is that prepubescent children are likely to vote exactly with whatever their parents vote for.
No, we shouldn’t. More voting isn’t necessarily better. It’s similar to the arguments people make for mandatory voting, which is also a bad idea.
We don’t need more noise in the voting process.
If anything I’d want to restrict the franchise to people with a certain level of knowledge but I don’t think it’s possible to do that in a just way.
Brexit
Every ballot should have a random set of 10 questions on it at the top that needs to be answered correctly for the vote to count. Anyone who is too young or old or uneducated to answer properly is not able to vote.
Im sure a literacy test would never ever be abused.
The comments in this thread are wild. So many saying practically the same thing. Polar opposite vote results. Lol.
