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Wait till you’re older

By Huw Leslie | August 1, 2008

Labour’s National Policy Forum voted this week to include a policy of votes for 16-year-olds in the manifesto at the next election.

On the one hand, I would have loved to have voted in the local elections this year, but am 17. This was unfair and illogical in many ways. I suspect I was far more passionate about the election and the outcome I desired than the vast majority of the voters. I was out in the pouring rain and late at night campaigning for Labour and Ken and loving (nearly) every minute of it. But I was six months away from being 18, and so the country didn’t judge my opinion worth listening to. It was deeply frustrating to be desperately attempting to convert ambivalent and apathetic friends to vote Labour, yet be unable to follow my own instruction.

However, Tom Harris, minister for Transport and superb blogger, has come out against the decision, and I have a lot of sympathy with his argument. Despite my deep-seated desire to vote, the closest I have come to the campaign for votes at sixteen is a badge and lanyard I was handed at a conference. A teenage suffragist campaign does not appear to be around the corner, and Harris is surely right to point out that if the vote were offered to 16 and 17 year olds, the vast majority would not use it. It is often heralded as the answer to low voter turnout, yet there is little evidence that the reason that voters over 18 have been voting in declining numbers is because they were unable to vote when they were 16. Indeed, I think it might even have the opposite effect: when a person turns 18, it is a big occasion. The new adult may well be more pleased that he can now enjoy a legal drink than with his new-found voting privileges, but I do think there must be a sense of novelty and achievement. If the voting age is 16, apathy as a result of ignorance is likely to be even higher, and there is a risk that the new right slips by unnoticed.

I really don’t know what I think about this. It may well be the wrong question to ask. My passion for politics is not typical of someone of my age, or indeed of someone of any age, and therein lies the problem. Political apathy in this country is the real reason for falling turnouts. Perhaps an examination of the way politicians, the media and the public communicate with each other is where the real answers lie, but that won’t be nearly as easy as simply passing a law.

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