Voting age to be lowered to 16 by next general election
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
It feels like we don’t have a functioning democracy in the U.K., and that gets in the way of pretty much everything else.
Vs. - in the last U.K. election, which party was the most vocal about that first-past-the-post system needing replacement? What % of the votes were cast for them?
~One thing to bear in mind is that FPTP limits the influence of “extreme” parties on elections (see UKIP’s vote share in 2015), but at the expense of requiring more mainstream parties to pander to those voters to avoid splitting the vote share. Jury is still out I think on what’s “best” here and probably depends on what “best” means to the person forming an opinion.~
Edit: turns out the above is at best contested, at worst disproven.
Although just from browsing the UKs AV proposal it does look like it'd be similar to IRV which has some wild results in certain tight races. Although I personally think that is fine; a little randomness is good for the system.
The weird thing is how many different election systems are in use in the UK depending on what the politics of each devolved assembly is "supposed to be".
I lived in his constituency at the time and I am ashamed to admit I voted for him. It’s a travesty to see what has happened since (not just the whole coalition thing, his work with Meta too).
If that is the nature of the atmosphere then I doubt many important people are going to put their head above the parapet and call for reforms in the direction of adults getting better political expression. The power holders don't think that is favourable to them.
As long as Reform UK splits the Tory vote FPTP will continue to be in Labour's interests.
In fact, at the moment moving away from FPTP would mostly benefit Reform UK and the Lib Dems, possibly the Tories, too as this point.
https://jobs.army.mod.uk/regular-army/entry-options/soldier/
In the context of the discussion on voting, I think the “decision” part is the key point here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-age-of-marriage-in-...
"You can have a bisexual orgy on your 16th birthday where someone gets pregnant in celebration of their first time voting, but under no circumstances is the woman allowed to be married until the kid is 15 months old, at which point she can marry another woman. Photographs of the event will, in many jurisdictions, be treated as a criminal offence even though the act itself isn't and those same photos would be fine at 18, which is also now the age when they are no longer subject to a mandatory choice between ongoing education or an apprenticeship."
Also, TIL that the UK was going to get compulsory part-time education from 14 to 18 back in 1918, but spending cuts happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Act_1918
So how far down in age would you go and why would you stop at that age?
I'd also argue that there should be no lower age limit for voting for people with taxable income. No taxation without representation.
This kind of thinking is not rooted in reality. When you were born, you were forced to accept the conditions you were born into. The same is true with laws. I understand that going to war is something else than going to school, but that's life.
> No taxation without representation.
"Representation" in the original slogans context does not really apply here (since it was about voting rights for a taxed population as a whole).
But for the idea of "anyone who has to pay taxes, must also have a say!", I can only say that it comes right back to the previous point: You could just as well argue the individual income tax rate must be zero, until a person had the opportunity to vote at least once. The world doesn't work this way.
Obviously. I'm saying it ought to work this way.
I don't think we're being ambitious enough here. I should be able to vote while drink-driving.
What's absurd is allowing a minor to vote.
So you're allowed to vote, but you don't need to pay your taxes. You're still considered a child regarding justice law, but considered adult regarding voting?
So basically you're not allowed to camp somewhere without the consent of your parents but you're "suddenly old enough" to judge about some laws?
I think the consensus is missing if voting is permitted by 16, but everything else stays the same.
I don't think children should have a say in the matter, they lack the critical thinking skills that adults do, which is why we limit their freedoms.
Granted, most adults also lack deep critical thinking skills but they have more capable brains than children.
Further, children are easier to manipulate than adults, which is very dangerous when it comes to something as critical as voting.
I think this also makes sense, I know when I was younger I was extremely frustrated to see adults making really bad decisions for my country that will have a much longer impact on my life than it will on theirs.
I think a minimum age makes sense, I don't think someone in elementary has any point in voting since most likely they would just do what their parents told them. But by 16 you are generally making your own decisions, your figuring out your adult plans, and not following everything your parents say.
What all these "well adults are dumb too!" arguments ignore is that, those adults were even dumber when they were 2 (or 5, compared to the original voting age of 21) years younger.
At least when you are forced to be in school you are in an environment to likely absorb... something. We regularly kept up with current events in school.
I know many adults that have basically zero idea what is going on in the world.
Also I should note that I did not claim anything about intelligence, but just an awareness of what is going on and the impact of it.
I would possibly even argue that a 16 year old being in school likely has a fresher recollection of history than many adults. I mean how many adults remember all of the math they learned compared to 16 year olds.
First off, the UK has one of the most generous tax free allowances in the world, you don’t pay tax on anything under £12,570. Most 16 year olds working part time or on low wages aren’t paying any tax at all, so the whole “no taxation without representation” thing doesn’t really apply here.
And let’s be honest, most 16 year olds aren’t working anyway. They’re still in school or college, not out earning or dealing with adult responsibilities.
Some people say teens are too immature to vote. Personally, I think it’s more about naivety. At 16, you’re still figuring out who you are, let alone understanding politics or economics. If someone like KSI ran for office, half of them would probably vote him in as Chancellor just for the memes.
You learn a lot of tough lessons on the way to adulthood. At 16, you’ve got zero life experience, no bills, no mortgage, no kids, and probably no full time job. So when it comes to voting, they’re more likely to be swayed by TikTok trends or what their mates think, rather than actual policies or ideology.
And let’s be real, Labour knows this. Just look at the voting intention by age
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379439/uk-election-poll...
However it will back fire because many that age will split the vote to Greens, Lib Dems and maybe even Corbynites.
Next question that courts might ask in cases are, if a 16 year old criminal gets away with more as they are counted as a juvenile, but is considered old enough to choose the lawmakers, does the same adult laws now apply to them? If they are not perceived as mature enough to be considered as an adult criminal, then why is it different for voting?
It doesn't matter who we vote for, as long as we vote? What a bad joke. By this theory, all foreign interference, propaganda, education, control of the news, etc.. are completely irrelevant, nothing we should be concerned about at all. Just vote and it'll be fine!
More that voting egotistically (in contrast to trying to predict what is best for society as a whole) is sufficient to create the incentives that benefit the many, as long as the number of voters makes up a high enough share of the population.
Those paying the most already are more invested in the outcomes of the country, do you mean their vote should count for more or less based on how much they pay in taxes?
Youth and parents get an extra vote on school stuff. Those whose education or career are related to a field get an extra vote. In some cases, you may hold 5x the voting power of someone who is removed and unfamiliar with a topic.
No idea if anything like that has been explored.
Allowing people to have more or less say based on stake would lead to a spiral. Those in charge take care of the people they care about, those people would continue to elect the same politicians, and everyone else would be left aside while power (and stake) consolidates.
Why should someone who knows nothing of field have a say in laws that over represents their knowledge and stake?
I don't think my vote for what you feed your kids should count the same as your vote on what you feed your kids.
The worry about votes and power collecting is sane. It happens already through propaganda and ill informed (usually due to low perceived stakes) voters. We need a system that counters the negative effects if low informed masses.
Well we definitely disagree there, but that's probably a deeper rabbit hole than is worth diving down here.
> Why should someone who knows nothing of field have a say in laws that over represents their knowledge and stake?
I don't think voting rights should be gated on education, experience, or opinions. I already hesitate with age, but saying a child shouldn't vote feels much less offensive than saying a person with money or education should get more votes.
> I don't think my vote for what you feed your kids should count the same as your vote on what you feed your kids.
I don't think either of us should have any say in what the other feeds their kids, the law should definitely not have a say in that either.
> We need a system that counters the negative effects if low informed masses.
I think we pretty well agree here, except for maybe the angle of a solution. I'm of the opinion that we can't force people to be better educated, nor should we prevent them from voting. In my opinion the government should only have as much authority as we are willing to hand over to an official elected by today's voting population. If we fear the mob or the uneducated voter than the issue is with how much power our government has rather than who does the voting.
(For the record: Devil's advocate take. I think this whole idea of voting in proportion to your monetary value is ridiculous.)
I was more thinking however that their average life expectency doesn't allow for long-term consequences of elections to affect them.
Children voting will ruin the grift.
In a very important sense, 16 year old has a much bigger stake in the future of their country than a 70 year old.
Not quite, because that would grant power and influence to the rich that is already quite heavy on account of their wealth and ability to employ constituents. Qualifying voting power by way of being an active payer is, however, absolutely sensible.
>A 16 year old has a much bigger stake in the future of their country than a 70 year old.
They also have nothing to lose. With the least invested in a system's continuation, history is rich with young teenage raiders, conquerors, mutineers, revolutionaries, and rioters. They are the primary demographic with the lowest stake, and have the least concern for any Chesterton's fences. They are also the poorest equipped to make decisions concerning material resources, since utopian idealism is common at that age. They haven't yet suffered or built much at all, and it's easy for them to dismiss the sheer volume of accumulated knowledge, material, and labor that sustains civilization.
Also I was more politically aware at 16 than most adult I know now.
This being the first thing I found says the closest age bracket 18-34 turnout was 53.6%
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/UK_Popul...
16-17 for each gender looks to be a little under 400K for each
So (4)(400,000)(0.536) = 857,600
So thousands.
Either way it's not like they're all going to vote one way and it's not like they can seize the government with their own special interest party that only caters to 16-17 year old even if they all managed to vote one way. So really as far as results it will mostly be a wash, but has the benefit of potentially creating some more engaged and politically active citizens which is a win for democracy.
> However, Conservative shadow minister Paul Holmes said the government's position was "hopelessly confused".
> "Why does this government think a 16-year-old can vote but not be allowed to buy a lottery ticket, an alcoholic drink, marry, or go to war, or even stand in the elections they're voting in?" he asked in the Commons.
That, and finishing reform of the lords. And separating the English parliament from a federal parliament over the separate nations in the federation.
Probably true. But IMO it's a good thing regardless. The impact of this is fundamentally pro-democracy above anything else.
I really doubt this proposal would ever actually be implemented, but still it is an interesting idea to ponder-in the abstract it seems fairer than a semi-arbitrary cutoff based on chronological age
Better idea should just be that you should be a taxpayer to vote. No tax = no vote. Why should people who aren't contributing decide how to spend the money of those contributing?
A 16 year old who works has a bigger stake than a 21 year old jobless bum stuck in their parents home smoking weed and playing vidya games.
It could be an NGO obeying the people, not govenment.
Of course, I totally see how it might lead to unintentional indirect discrimination (“disparate impact”)-but there is a difference between that, and what was essentially direct discrimination covered with a thin veneer of “plausible deniability”.
[1] They are actually private and selective.
Honestly I'm surprised this hasn't happened already, given how they "have no voice"..
"It doesn’t matter how smart teens are or how well they scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet."
"The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so."
"In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part."
https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=unders...
Or accept that growing up is part of life, and that there are short term consequences of political choice too that groups of people are currently denied?
Liz Truss was only PM for 49 days. How much impact on the economy did she have?
https://fortune.com/europe/2022/09/27/uk-stock-bond-markets-...
The article was published 22 days into her tenue.
Thus, no political choice, is short term.
Or even if they did, the amount of effort they'd put in researching, considering and modelling the potential outcomes would would be commensurate to the impact they would expect their vote to have. I suspect for a good chunk of adult voters, this is in fact the case.
So it's not obvious to me that including more voters whose decision-making is more emotional will necessarily produce worse outcomes. It's conceivable it'll produce better outcomes.
Edit: I'm being downvoted. To be clear, I'm an ardent democrat, but the idea that people vote analytically and rationally doesn't make sense for the above reason. The most informed voters are, in my experience, often highly emotional.
> Or even if they did, the amount of effort they'd put in...
This is actually quite an interesting area if you look into the game theory of making choices in a group setting. Strong strategies typically often don't involve doing much research, but they are rather frustrating for the people who take an interest in politics. Real-world behaviours are arguably quite reasonable on this front too, although they are limited by the ability of the average person to reason their way through the policy suggestions being made by though leaders.
Although I do agree that more voters isn't better. There is a certain level of objective correctness in political decisions if we admit basic ideas like "policies should be tested to see whether they achieve the goals that they were intended to" as a measure of success and the point should be to design systems that optimise on it to some degree.
Yes. And in detail, with this model of a rational electorate, skilled influencers put the effort in to devise a policy platform and convince others that it is good for them. The majority pick a platform that they are convinced by.
It's worth it for the influencers, because they have an outsized impact. It's worth it for everyone else only if choosing a coalition is very low-effort. Or if they are entertained by the influencers.
Again, I'm an ardent democrat. I'm just pointing out the flaws in any argument that assumes rational voters are a good thing - because it's rational to not waste much time on voting. Instead, democracy works best when voters feel an arguably irrational sense of duty and civic pride.
But that wouldn't be rational. The rational approach is to vote when you are in (or plausibly in, or plausibly going to eventually be in) the majority coalition. The hyper-rational equilibrium is politicians do exactly what a majority coalition of voters want and no-one bothers to vote, but once the politicians start becoming flawed or preferences change over time the equilibrium shifts quite rapidly to a rational voter base forming large coalitions that turn up to vote.
It isn't rational to vote if for people who aren't affiliated with a coalition to some degree (and never will be) but people like that are basically a political non-factor anyway and are probably legitimately wasting their time when they vote because there is no policy formula available that they want to support, by definition.
A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy even just walking to the polling station, let alone keeping up with political developments through the intervening months and years. As you say, in a hyper-rational world turnout would be way lower - whether it would oscillate and overcorrect as you suggest, or reach a stable equilibrium, I'm not sure.
But whatever my motivation for voting and trying to stay informed, I do not believe it is primarily rational. It's probably some mixture of duty, diversionary entertainment, and ritual. If lowering the voting age to 16 could help inculcate that sense of duty and better establish that ritual, that would be a pretty convincing reason to do it in my opinion.
No it wouldn't. You haven't established the link between your premise and conclusions and the rational view is the opposite of what you came to. You've established that in the best case the candidate you prefer will win by more than one vote - which is correct but not the end of the line of thought.
Think of it like building an embankment. If you design the embankment to exactly hold back the maximum amount of water you expect it to hold it'll probably fail in an emergency when it shouldn't have because something slightly unexpected happens. The rational thing to do is engineer in a margin of safety. You're trying to optimise the wrong metric which is ~30-60 minutes of a voters time vs. probability of the legislature behaving in a way that is favourable to them. In both voting and embankment building it'd be silly (dare I say, irrational) to aim for a narrow success. The median election (analogy: median storm) should make the margins for your candidate (analogy: embankment tolerance) look excessive (analogy: over-engineered).
Otherwise, you're basically arguing that rational people should optimise their way to being on the losing side of elections - which is a big tip-off you're making a logic error in your argument somewhere. Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes.
Maybe, it depends on the risk and the distance I've got to carry it.
In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated. And they must ignore the surprisingly persuasive pro-flooding lobby, of course.
> Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes.
Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons?
Note that I'm not sure how much any of this applies to the real world. My main argument is against a model of voters as purely "rational". They are not, and in some ways at least, that's probably a good thing. I certainly think rationality is a very poor argument against extending the franchise to 16 year-olds.
Yes. You should put the brick where the engineer tells you too, and at the end of it you will observe there are more bricks than were strictly needed. Any other approach would be reckless.
Again, you're arguing that the rational thing to do is to not build the thing properly. You've misunderstood rationality and you're getting nonsense conclusions where people choose to get to get poor results by their own standards because they aren't very good at risk assessment. That isn't how rational actors behave. Rational people take a holistic view of all the foreseeable costs and benefits of an action (like, for example, having a government that aligns with their policy preferences) and are capable of probabilistic thinking.
> In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated.
Well sure, but in practice people aren't rational. If they were rational, they would just quietly assess whether their coalition had the potential to win at some point and - if so - identify that it is in their best interests to vote. Then do it without prompting.
> Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons?
The game theoretic optimum in both those cases is to achieve the best possible result through communication and coalition building.
Of course in many (most?) situations, we get the best outcome overall by acting socially. But, to me, free-riding on the socially-motivated activities of others is a "rational" strategy (with a insignificant chance of one brick/vote making a difference), if not a laudable one. Which is why I don't advocate the "rational" strategy.
I appreciate your point that if everyone took that strategy we'd all suffer. I can never control what everyone does, but maybe I can build or support a big enough coalition to improve outcomes for the majority, or at least people like me. But free-riding will still be an option many choose, unless punished severely (which most countries don't when it comes to voting).
I don't argue that people "choose to get poor results", I argue that some proportion may recognise their possible effect on the democratic outcome is so small that on some level they have no effective choice at all. That's just the reality of being one among an elaborate of many millions. Democracy is still the best option we have, I hasten to add.
In Prisoner's Dilemma, as originally formulated, I believe communication is expressly forbidden. And even where it's allowed, in a one-off game the optimal strategy for an individual uninterested in the welfare of their comrade is to collaborate with the authorities. If both participants take this strategy, it's to the detriment of both. This apparent paradox is what makes it so interesting. Now you can solve the paradox with communication through repeated games, which I think is what you allude to.
No, the disagreement stems from different beliefs over whether you've taken a rational position. Especially odd since at some level you understand it is an irrational conclusion since you're voting anyway.
What you are calling "rational" probably would make sense in a world where people were unable to communicate and playing a one-off game. The issue that idea runs in to is people can communicate and elections are a repeated game. If voting is modelled as a game where people don't communicate then a lot of nonsense results turn up. The rational strategy for most people when communication is possible is to join up with a coalition that can win, then vote. There is a minority of people with unusual enough political opinions that they can't realistically join a coalition and they rationally wouldn't vote, but by definition they are fringe groups. In the main, most people would vote if they are rational. And indeed, in a move that makes one hopeful for humanity, most people do indeed make the rational decision on that one.
Any study of coalition games like voting quickly discover that voting is entirely rational and a theoretical optimum in practice for most participants in a society. If you do a course on game theory there should be entire lectures on the subject. I suspect you might have done a course on game theory so I'm not sure why that wasn't drilled in. The mechanics of coalition building among rational actors is a fundamental topic.
> In Prisoner's Dilemma, as originally formulated, I believe communication is expressly forbidden.
You can look it up [0]; as originality formulated it was a 100-round game where cooperation is an entirely rational behaviour (for most rounds, anyway). It is a very powerful example of how cooperation followed by tit-for-tat is a near-optimal strategy under a lot of realistic assumptions and requires only the tiniest of communication channels to pull off and improve from an inefficient Nash equilibrium to a Pareto efficient one.
In fact, I suspect the actual mistake you're making is thinking that a Nash equilibrium is equivalent to a rational one, when in fact it is not. When communication and coalitions are possible the Nash equilibrium is usually just a starting point for negotiations before the rational agents decide to get a better result for themselves.
I don't see how this applies to voting at all in countries without compulsory voting.
Communication and iterations also don't seem that relevant to my argument about free-riding, since one's voting record is not usually visible.
I really hate when these ideas come of that effectively boil down to creating some kind of litmus test for who can be "trusted" to vote. We have an age limit, maybe the UK wants a lower limit, but at least that's a pretty simple and clear line to be drawn.
This is a ridiculous claim. If you believe children think at all, they do it with the prefrontal cortex, just like every other mammal.
It's certainly true that those parts of the brain continue to influence decision making in adults. Nonetheless, research has shown that those parts of the brain are far more influential in teens.
I think there is a good argument to be made that young people are the biggest stakeholders in our future, and should have a say.
> A growing body of research strongly suggests that brain development continues well into people’s 20s and beyond. ... There is strong scientific consensus that people’s decision-making abilities can evolve between their early and late 20s
https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/teen-brains-neuroscienc...
Some things that are better supported by multiple lines of scientific research, to quote two consecutive bits from the second article: "young people’s general cognitive skills, including their ability to reason, don’t change much after the age of 14 or so." "What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making in teens and early twentysomethings." These things are really outside of the pop idea of "your brain isn't fully developed until 25".
Yeah, that's pretty much saying the same thing I posted.
"Young people’s general cognitive skills" (SAT and ACT scores) develop early and "don’t change much after the age of 14 or so."
"What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making." In other words, "Good judgment isn’t something [teens] can excel in, at least not yet."
By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but what I posted wasn't a popsci article, it was from Stanford Children's Health.
Yes, I did notice the source, and I found that more unfortunate because it's using Stanford's name to peddle crap. It might not be a literal popsci magazine piece, but it's peddling the same popsci flavored falsehood about how the brain isn't "fully developed" until age 25 or so and it follows the same popsci tropes of grossly oversimplifying, exaggerating, and using science words to sound legitimate while discouraging actual scientific inquiry. The article's actual audience is layman parents, not even the general public, and clueless ones at that if they need to be reminded about things like "become familiar with things that are important to your teens". As another example, its claim of saying "Adults think with the prefrontal cortex ... Teens process information with the amygdala" is not just grossly oversimplifying, it's just wrong. Both use both. It's just a very bad article.
I think you're taking it far too literally (do you also complain that the 2D illustration of gravity wells is inaccurate?), but I don't care to argue about it all day. Take it up with Stanford.
Sometimes: https://xkcd.com/895/ Poor analogies usually cheat the learner.
Though at least with gravity well diagrams, it's often (though not always, or explicitly enough) marked up as just a conceptual aid in grasping how the trajectories and orbits we can see arise without Newtonian forces. It's not passed off as the whole thing. Nor, importantly, is it used to justify policies about what people can do or should be allowed to do, or can be seen as responsible for. This bad article isn't just oversimplification, it's a gross misrepresentation of actual developmental science and the name of the site it's on just lends it fake scientific authority that will only further encourage people to use it to justify real decisions based on the false claims. That's not harmless. It's somewhat contained, being an article aimed at clueless parents of teens, until it's spread around more reinforcing the "brains don't mature until 25" meme. I hope you'll at least reconsider if you think of spreading it again.
Sometimes a meme claim just doesn't stand up if you actually look at the paper(s). First you have to find the papers, if a citation isn't forthcoming, but if there even is a literature you can just read some of it. To check if a meme matches, you don't even need to be an expert or have real scientific training, or read the whole thing, all that's needed in many cases is just: read the abstract, the conclusion, check if it matches the meme. Sometimes looking at charts or seeing wait a minute they are basing this supposed human universal on one undergrad subject (or finding fMRI brain activity in a dead fish) can also be illuminating. There's a lot of bunk science out there, and reproducibility is a problem everywhere. This is irritating, though it's not like I'm thinking about it much of the time or crusading to correct everyone wrong on the internet.
More directly on the brain maturity thing, I suppose part of the interest also comes from how I really find the ongoing infantilization of western society grotesque and see the meme as part of it. I also just remember being a teen, and remember many teens around me from then. Some were scouts, some had jobs, a lot of us drove carefully, some not so carefully. There were temptations, some succumbed and some didn't. We were alright, overall. People change, but not usually by a huge degree, this cuts both ways for those who were more responsible and those who were more reckless. Still, comparing stupid stuff done then with stupid stuff done now by 30-somethings... a lot of the time it's a tossup which is really more stupid. The 30-somethings can cause a lot more collateral damage though, generally having greater assets and responsibilities.