The Kids Are All Right?
With 5th May looming near, many undergraduates will be deliberating where to place their votes for the first time in a general election. However, only 39 per cent of 18- to 21-year-olds voted in 2001, and this year the percentage may fall yet again, whether due to apathy, disdain for politicians or simply a feeling that there are better things to do.
What is all too predictable is that political pundits and politicians will lament the behaviour of us young folk, and will ask – with varying degrees of sincerity – how on earth they can engage us in the political process. One solution that has been suggested in recent years is to lower the voting age to 16. Allow young people to get involved in politics when they are still open to the influence of their teachers and parents, and more of them will turn out to vote – so the theory goes.
The ground has already been prepared with the introduction of citizenship classes into the National Curriculum. Now all that is needed to extend the franchise is the political will and an act of Parliament. But our MPs wouldn’t jump on the bandwagon of a quick-fix solution, just to appear to be doing something to address the problem. Would they? Unfortunately the bandwagon is already in motion.
Votes for 16- year-olds is a Liberal Democrat policy (unsurprising given the disproportionately high support they enjoy from young people), and Labour’s Policy Forum report says: “Labour believes there is a strong case for considering reducing the voting age to 16 years old”.
Many people, in the spirit of democracy, will probably agree, but while there are a whole host of good arguments as to why 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote, there are issues at stake in this debate that are too often ignored. Lowering the voting age will not only be impractical, it will likely fail in its main objective – increasing turnout and the engagement of young people in politics. More than this, it may actually exacerbate the problem of the disengagement of young people.
For those who would brand me illiberal, it should be pointed out that nobody endorses a universal franchise; the Electoral Commission’s report last year advocated maintaining the current age of enfranchisement of 18. The old cry of the American revolutionaries of “no taxation without representation” is a powerful one, and one that should be heeded to the greatest extent possible, but there will always have to be a minority who are excluded from the electoral process for various reasons.
One of those reasons will always have to be age, for just as there is an age of criminal responsibility, there must too be one of political responsibility. The question is whether that age is too high at the moment. Obviously, 16-year-olds are capable of caring passionately about politics, of joining political parties and protest movements – and many do. Unfortunately, most do not, and the Electoral Commission discovered that under-18s are themselves divided as to whether they want the vote.
Any age we chose as a cut-off point would be arbitrary, but lowering the voting age would put us out of step with the rest of the world: only eight countries (including Iran, Cuba and North Korea) have voting ages under 18. Of course, the inconsistencies within UK law are often pointed out: 16- and 17-year-olds are able to marry (with parents’ consent) and have children, but are not allowed to vote.
However, 16-yearolds can’t drive or drink alcohol, and it is generally accepted that there is no one ‘age of maturity’. Each situation must be considered on its own merits. If the franchise was extended to 16-year-olds we would be putting a lot of trust in the ability of citizenship classes to inspire a currently-absent civic spirit in pupils. If the classes failed, the consequences for turnout could be disastrous.
Perhaps political apathy in the younger generation is simply a reflection of a similar lack of interest from more mature voters. However, political scientists have discovered that the crucial factor determining people’s tendencies to vote throughout their lives seems to be whether they vote in the first couple of elections for which they are eligible. If they do vote those first couple of times, the likelihood is that they will continue to do so throughout their lives.
If not, then they will probably never pick up the habit. Part of the reason for the decline in turnout over recent decades may well have been the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1969. For whatever reason, people given the vote at 18 have been less likely to vote in their first few elections, so more people have gone on to become life-long non-voters. This contrasts with those who began voting at age 21 and still vote at a rate of 70 per cent.
The danger is that 16-year-olds will be given the right to vote and not use it, and if this happens then the chances are that they may not vote throughout their lives: a disaster in the long run. As the older, more civic-minded generations die away, and those given the vote at 18 and 16 come to make up the majority of the population, voter participation may decline to previously unheard-of levels.
It is crucial that young people find politics relevant to their lives, but this will not be best achieved simply by handing them a vote that many of them will not use. Citizenship classes are part of the solution, as is having a more diverse range of MPs and Cabinet ministers, including more young, female and ethnic minority MPs to whom a wider section of young people can relate. Addressing issues that matter to young people, such as the environment and education, would also help.
It is not surprising that these difficult and long-term solutions are often ignored by politicians focused on tomorrow’s headlines. But what should be the centre of everyone’s concern is that people do vote when they reach 18. The Catch-22 situation is that because young people don’t vote, politicians spend very little energy trying to appeal to us, instead concentrating on all manner of incentives to pensioners who reliably turn out to the polls. But think of the possibilities.
If under-25s get involved, maybe tuition fees would become an electoral liability, maybe we’d be given free TV licences and bus passes like the OAPs – we could even demand an alcohol allowance to get us through the cold winter months.
But give the vote to 16-year-olds, and a likely dwindling of political activity amongst the young will ensure that even the most realistic of these aspirations will be unlikely to make it on to the political agenda, and politicians will have even less cause to listen to our concerns than they do now.
21st Apr 2005