More Germans want to raise the voter age than lower it

[Tender Branson]

Emind poll:

30% raise it from 18 to 21
15% lower it from 18 to 16

http://www.extremnews.com/nachrichten/politik/d8db144b11c3778

[afleitch]

Doesn't suprise me; there is a general 'anti-youth' feeling amongst the electorate which ends up getting captured in polls like these. If anyone should be forced to loose the right to vote, it should be retirees.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Have you ever met a 16-year-old? I wouldn't support their right to vote either. <.< I remember what an idiot I was at that age, and I was one of the smarter 16-year-olds.

Heck I'd probably let a 12-year-old vote before I'd let a 16-year-old vote. 12-year-olds at least tend to have awareness and self-irony that no 16-year-old has ever possesed. But then to have a voting system where you can vote between 12-14, then loose that right until you turn 18 would be a bit strange, so keeping it at where it is, should probably be best.

[Franzl]

18 is good.

[afleitch]

Have you ever met a 16-year-old? I wouldn't support their right to vote either. <.< I remember what an idiot I was at that age, and I was one of the smarter 16-year-olds.

Heck I'd probably let a 12-year-old vote before I'd let a 16-year-old vote. 12-year-olds at least tend to have awareness and self-irony that no 16-year-old has ever possesed. But then to have a voting system where you can vote between 12-14, then loose that right until you turn 18 would be a bit strange, so keeping it at where it is, should probably be best.

Problem is, it is not the job of the state and indeed would be a disturbing precedent if it decided that 16 year olds are too 'immature' and therefore there was a blanket ban on having them vote. In Britain 16 year olds can join the army, marry and pay taxes yet they cannot vote. My late senile grandmother however could vote; no one placed a test on her conscious ability to cast a vote even though she was pretty gaga by the end. You know this forum as well as I do; some 18, 21, 30 and 40 year olds on here make me groan when they voice stupid opiions. Yet we let them vote

[DC Al Fine]

How do you think the 16-17 turnout rate would compare to the general population?

[ZuWo]

The most important to me is that the age requirements for different actions are as similar as possible. I don't understand, for example, why 16-year old kids should have the right to drive cars but only be considered mature enough to vote at the age of 18. The same with the legal drinking age, which is an even more extreme case in some parts of the world. Let them do all these things at the age of 18, that's a reasonable threshold in my opinion.  

[Leftbehind]

How do you think the 16-17 turnout rate would compare to the general population?

Depends if the schools registered them. If they didn't it'd be terrible (at least in this country), as evidenced by over half of UK 17-25 year olds not being registered to vote.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

In Britain 16 year olds can join the army, marry and pay taxes yet they cannot vote.

Yes but the problem isn't that they can't vote. The problem is that they can do those things. 16-year-olds shouldn't be able to marry or join the army either. (or drive!) You should raise those age limits, not lower this one.   

I know as well as you that there are plently of adults who aren't mature enough to vote either. But while I'd argue that more 21-year-olds are sane than stupid, I would never claim that more 16-year-olds are sane than stupid.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

How do you think the 16-17 turnout rate would compare to the general population?

Depends if the schools registered them. If they didn't it'd be terrible (at least in this country), as evidenced by over half of UK 17-25 year olds not being registered to vote.

Why not just register someone automaticly the day they reach the voting age. Works in a lot of countries.

[ag]

The most important to me is that the age requirements for different actions are as similar as possible. I don't understand, for example, why 16-year old kids should have the right to drive cars but only be considered mature enough to vote at the age of 18. The same with the legal drinking age, which is an even more extreme case in some parts of the world. Let them do all these things at the age of 18, that's a reasonable threshold in my opinion.  

Good argument for resstricting driving to the 18+ olds. Would whole-heartedly support that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Horrible people are horrible.

[Gunnar Larsson]

The most important to me is that the age requirements for different actions are as similar as possible. I don't understand, for example, why 16-year old kids should have the right to drive cars but only be considered mature enough to vote at the age of 18. The same with the legal drinking age, which is an even more extreme case in some parts of the world. Let them do all these things at the age of 18, that's a reasonable threshold in my opinion.  

I would not say that having different age limits is necessarily wrong as different activities require different levels of maturity. However that 16-year olds (in most countries) are required  to follow laws over which they have no say is plain wrong; rights and obligations should match.

[Gunnar Larsson]

Doesn't suprise me; there is a general 'anti-youth' feeling amongst the electorate which ends up getting captured in polls like these. If anyone should be forced to loose the right to vote, it should be retirees.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Doesn't suprise me; there is a general 'anti-youth' feeling amongst the electorate which ends up getting captured in polls like these. If anyone should be forced to loose the right to vote, it should be retirees.

Indeed. The olds, not the youth, are the ones who often cast the stupidest votes.

[RI]

Problem is, it is not the job of the state and indeed would be a disturbing precedent if it decided that 16 year olds are too 'immature' and therefore there was a blanket ban on having them vote.

No, it's exactly the job of the state to decide who can and who cannot vote.

[they don't love you like i love you]

I'm generally in favor of an age of 18 for everything except driving. Raising the driving age to 18 would be a logistical nightmare in many ways (think of how schools would have to increase their transportation for one), but there's one that particularly stands out:

College is no time to learn how to drive, and there is no guarantee that anyone heading off to school would do so in high school after turning 18 or the summer before. A lot might not even be able to, we all have heard of 17-year olds in college. And if it's far away with no access to a car, they might not even be able to, you'll have people graduating at 22 with no driving experience.

The other argument a lot of people bring up is that teen drivers have a lot higher accident rate than most drivers. Well obviously! They are less experienced than other drivers. If the age is raised then 18-20 year olds would just be as inexperienced as 16-18 year olds, and they'd too be just as bad, probably even worse for the reason mentioned above. In theory one should be able to graduate high school with all basic life skills learned, and that includes driving.

But anyway, there's a reason why no US states or Canadian provinces (I don't know about other countries) have an 18 driving age. It's not as good idea as it sounds in terms of "consistency".

[Tender Branson]

Here, the voting age was already lowered to 16 before the 2008 national elections and as early as 2005 in Vienna.

There are some groups that advocated youth voting, such as the BJV (Federal Youth Agency) and then the government passed it.

It cannot be measured what the actual turnout among 16-18 year olds is, but despite the lowering of the voting age ahead of the 2008 elections, turnout actually increased in 2008 among all voters to 79%, which was up by 1/2 of a percent compared with the 2006 elections. So it can be argued that at least here, turnout among the 16-18 year olds was not bad.

Here is an English version of a study by the exit pollster SORA about first time 16-18 year old voters in 2008:

http://www.sora.at/fileadmin/downloads/wahlen/2009_waehlen-mit-16_summary-english.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Oops, I should have read the article first (turnout among 16-18 year olds was actually not significantly lower than that of the general population: 73% vs. 79%):

[mubar]

I suspect this particular result has been influenced by many Germans being fed up with the (short-time) successes of the Pirate party and perceive those as the fault of the youngest voters. Similarly it's well-known that whenever right-wing extremist parties get high results in East German states, the most support for these neo-nazis usually comes from 18-20 year-old men. So in this regard it'd make sense to raise the voter age to 21 - at least for men.

But all in all, most age limits are going to be both necessary and arbitrary at the same time. In Finland, if a beverage has 1,2% alcohol, you need to be 18 years old to buy it, but a beverage with 1,1% alcohol could legally be bought by a pre-school kid (in practice the cashier would probably say no, though). No particular reason for that exact limit, there just has to be one. At least most age limits here are set at 18. But exactly because of the arbitrariness, I support the status quo as long as very good arguments for a change are brought up. Why lower the voting age to 16, and not 17, or 15? Or 14, for that matter? There has to be some well-grounded evidence that it's now exactly the 16 year-olds, who can be considered to be mature enough to decide the national affairs. At that stage, every year means quite a big increase in maturity, so maybe show some studies about attitudes among the youth by the exact age, for example, to support the argument of lowering the voting age.

Based on that SORA report, the 16-17 year-olds in Austria seem to be doing quite ok in regard of their maturity level, guess we'll get more information later this year. But still, even if Austrian youth are ready to vote at 16, doesn't necessarily mean that the young in some other country are.

[Hatman 🍁]

Age limits are arbitrary, but since you have to draw the line somewhere, make it 18, but allow anyone under the age to take a citizenship test if they want to vote. If a 5 year old can pass it, let him/her vote.

[Nichlemn]

Age limits are arbitrary, but since you have to draw the line somewhere, make it 18, but allow anyone under the age to take a citizenship test if they want to vote. If a 5 year old can pass it, let him/her vote.

I like this, indeed I'd extend the concept to anything at all prohibited under paternalistic/competency grounds. Ideally it'd just be a pure competency test for all, no ageism. But in practice I'd be worried about the potential for abuse (such as what occurred with literacy tests under Jim Crow).