Lets Have a Vote

After the Scottish Referendum I was watching a show on BBC 3 online. It was Frankie Boyle's Referendum Autopsy. In it he made a number of claims, one of which was that the extention of the voting franchise to young people in the referendum did not go far enough. That in fact we should extend the franchise to hawks because they have about as much mental capacity as some adults and adults don't need to prove their mental capacity in order to vote.

Yes it a silly notion, but it raises a good question about voting: who should be able to vote?

Now we all know that in general the state imposes restrictions on voting. This is done for a variety of reasons from protecting young people to punishing criminals. In the past however there were restrictions in various countries based on things which we today would consider outright discrimination. The Jim Crow Laws in America prevented black people from voting on numerous grounds, women in our own country had to fight for sufferage and in New Mexico Idiots and Insane People cannot vote to this day.

What this tells me is that voting laws are fluid.

We accept that changes need to be made every now and then and we make them.

Now there are a lot of reasons cited as to why we shouldn't let 16 year olds vote. A popular one is that young people are not mature enough to cast a vote, that they will make a poor choice... but then again 4 million supposedly mature adults walked in voting booths this year and put a cross next to UKIP. Adults don't have to prove maturity so why should children? and to extend this argument even further. A child age 6 could drop into a coma for 13 years and wake up in time to register for a vote. Now to their mind they are still a 6 year old child but in reality they are an adult who can go out and drink beer, get married, vote, join the army and even stand for election if they were so inclined.

Yes I know a situation like that would never occur. But it could.

Another reason is that children simply don't know who to vote for. They wouldn't have formed a proper opinion yet. Except a recent book on the subject showed that in general reasons we vote for certain candidates are arbitrary and include things like the candidates surname, the attractiveness of the candidate and even how you describe yourself in the bedroom.

So where does that leave the case of denying votes to young people? suprisingly it is still quite strong. Voting laws have changed due to overwhelming evidence of need rather than want. I don't see thousands of young people chaining themselves up outside of Westminster, I don't see 'young rights' activists being arrested after mass protests. What I do see is a number of older people look at young people and thinking they might agree with them so deciding to give them a go at the voting booth.

As I pointed out at the beginning voting laws are arbitrary. We draw a line at 18 because thats where society currently says it should be and while the reasons giving for lowering voting age beng a bad idea can be discredited its very easy to back them up with evidence that young people are very easily influenced by peer pressure into doing drugs, smoking, drinking and stealing.

Maybe one day voting will be extended to 16 year olds, but for now I don't see the need.