Voting at 16

[matty]

This topic is in my opinion very controversial but for me i believe that at sixteen years old a person has reached the age of maturity and also i believe that if your old enough to pay tax, your old enough to have a say in what your paying for.
I've started this thread in light of the recent BBC documentary 16: Too Young To Vote? in which Mellisa Suffield who plays Lucy Beale tries to find out if their really was support for the voting age to be lowered to the age of 16 in Britain after all it seems to have worked in Austria, Brazil and other south american and african countries. But one case of lowering of voting age within my own country stands out. Three british crown dependecies The Isle Of Man, Jersey and Guernsey have all lowered there voting ages to 16 and most of them seem to have worked.
The figures presented to us on the last vote on this topic in the house of commons possibly proves that we could do it. The fact that only 9 people would need to have been convinced to create a win for the bill. I keep coming back to this but somebody who can pay taxes, join the military, have a job etc should be given the right to vote.
With the general politic hatred in our country that is very openly targeted at MPs after their expenses were released to the eye of the public reader through the telegraph. I have found plenty of interesting proposals in my research and some baffle me as none are actually going to purseaude me unless i can have a full vote in an election whether it be local or general or European.
What would you say was the correct minimum age for voting is and what would your response be to the following questions?
Should the voting age for local elections be 16?
Should the voting age for local elections be 13?
Should the voting age for general elections be 16?
Should the voting age for general elections be 13?
My response would be that 13 is far too young to give the vote to somebody, i myself may be mature enough to vote but the ease of influence and likelyhood of just ticking a box(its crossing a box but anyway) is a very bad thing. I know many people my age who would turn out at an election for the novelty factor and not actually do their research.
However if we were to teach politics which would cover everything from the structure of politics to the different political parties beliefs and history we would maybe be more reasoned in giving the 16 year old the vote. I hear this very same argument when i look at the information that people present:
'What is the difference between an uninformed adult vote and an uninformed childs vote, we need to educate the children to benifit the future adults' thats generally the sum of it.
And if you think of it this way were going to be left with the mess in 50 years time at least let us decide who is going to make it for us and who we are expecting to prevent it from happening. What we need is a lowering of the voting age and more education on this topic in our schools and all of then we might do better as a nation.

[Josh]

In general I agree with you. I think 16 could work.

However, and this is just a humorous anecdotal observation: I'd trust the vote of a 13 year old over the vote of 16 year old. 16 year olds are much more distracted by other things to do their research well

The only other thing I'd add is the concern of how much influence high school teachers would have on voting results if the students in their social studies classes could vote. Some teachers have great powers of persuasion... for good or for ill.

[matty]

That would be a major problem and i could not think of a way to adress it and it relies on trust but i'm not picturing the kind of lesson that could be given too much room for persuasion as the majorty of it would be done on manifesto based research and it would including politics history etc. The teacher wouldn't be allowed to go 'you vote for labour their better than all the others and the only other good partys BNP' it would be very difficult to do that if the teacher did their job properly.

[Josh]

The teacher wouldn't be allowed to go 'you vote for labour their better than all the others and the only other good partys BNP' it would be very difficult to do that if the teacher did their job properly

.

It's the same here- teachers aren't allowed to come out and explicitly advocate a particular political party (or religion for that matter), but still it's amazing how a teacher can subtly influence their students.

Probably the best innoculation against undue influence is having teachers who teach the controversy and having a diversity of teachers with different personal viewpoints.

[matty]

It's the same here- teachers aren't allowed to come out and explicitly advocate a particular political party (or religion for that matter), but still it's amazing how a teacher can subtly influence their students.

Are you speaking from personal experience there Josh and if you are its a bit different advocating christianity than advocating fascist parties and i know the power of teachers persuasion luckily i have my own mind.

[krhagan19]

I believe it is an issue dealing with the very core of the founding of this country, Taxation without representation. I see two possible solutions. 1st, everyone who earns a taxable income regardless of age be granted suffrage. 2nd No taxes shall be levied against citizens who have not yet reached the age of suffrage i.e. 18. Either option would deal justly with the unpresented 16 year old taxpayer.

[Josh]

That makes a lot of sense, kevin. Hadn't thought of it that way.
Although the tracking of who can vote and who can't would probably be a nightmare .

[krhagan19]

I disagree. All taxes are handled by Social security number. It is also tied to your date of birth. We either allow Universal suffrage to all people old enough to pay taxes, in your case lower the voting age to 16. On the other hand, we could use the social security database keep track of all workers under the age of 18 and simply not with hold taxes from their income until the paycheck after their 18th Birthday. With modern technology this should not be difficult to do. It would have to be done by federal constitutional amendment though so state income taxes couldn't screw over these same individuals. The only sticky part is Sales Tax. Everyone pays that, regardless of whether they work or vote. I know not in Oregon where you live, but in most of the states, including GA, everyone pays sales tax.

[matty]

Well, as a brit i've wrote this all from an english scenario kind of thing so josh may feel free to point out in ut any atlantic differences if he needs.

[krhagan19]

Are you a reformer Matty? Does it bother you that your elected Prime Minister has to plead with the Queen to dissolve Parliament to hold an election? Does it further annoy you that the newly elected Prime Minister must go see the queen to ask permission to form "Her Majesties Government"?

[matty]

Yes they both annoy me what annoys me more is that election timing is purely tactical there is no set date for the election. Right now we have an unelected and widely unwanted prime minister running our country who has managed to ruin our economy. The problem is our whole government system.
Politicians have been living off this caption.
'We get rich while our people and our country get poor'
And that can't be good for our nation. The first thing to do is get rid of our politic system immediatly. So basically i'd reform parliament. I'm also in favour of an English Parliament for one reason.
Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland all have a parliament where only people from their country can sit however every english law is made in houses of westminister and we end up with Scots, N.I and Welsh making our laws. If i had this parliament it would be completely seperate from Westminister

[Josh]

unelected and widely unwanted prime minister

What? Please explain.

[matty]

O.K so you don't know. Gordon Brown is unelected yes i'll call you an ambulance. The wa our system works is that i a prime minister resigns and there is still time left in the parties term they allow the party to choose a new leader who undergoes a formal ceremony and becomes prime minister. So Mr. Brown is unelected and is probably the most unpopular prime minister since who knows.
Look up Brown opinion poll, he's been under 50 for quite sometime and he would need at least 45 to have a feint chance of being PM after the next election. Which he gets to decide when too hold. So good for you americans and your democracy but ours is more a dictater friendly democracy.

[Josh]

Embarrassed I don't know this stuff..

So, how did I not know that Tony Blair resigned? I thought his term ended and then Brown was elected.

Did Blair resign because his approval ratings were so low or what?

[matty]

Not in that way, some letters between him and members of his party were leaked so he decided to resign and the labour party but Brown(of all people) forward to become prime minister so that was how it happened and now we expected an election and we expect that labour will no longer be in power with liberal and tories both doing quite well but we'll just have to wait and see. I expect that tory leader David Cameron will become Prime Minister. The liberals need to try and canvus labour votes to get into second party position, its there best better as lots of labour voters will never vote tory and may be looking for a new party. I'm not sure what minority parties might get in but SNP, Plaid Crymru and Greens are all in with a chance of seats and regretably the BNP could well manage a seat which would piss most of us real british citizens off.

[krhagan19]

Blair put Brown in power to save face. No matter how awfully Blair fouled up, he seems like bloody Winston Churchill compared to Gordon Brown, who is one of the most disgusting (pick his nose and eats it during PMQ) This video "How to pick your nose like a Prime Minister" Demonstrates the utter depravity of this disgusting monster! He has driven your country into the ground. This is all to Blair's advantage because even though he resigned in disgrace, he is no where near as universally despised at Gordon Brown. It is funny how our countries change up having competent leadership that the global community respects. When you had the baffoon John Major, we had the charismatic Bill Clinton. When you had the very statesmen like until the last few months Blair, we had Prince Usurper Bush II the terrible. Now that we have Obama, who is not particularly effective but well liked in the international community, and you have Gordon Brown, a man so articulate and bumbling that he makes George Bush's incomrehensible "Mission accomplished" speech that major combat had ended in Iraq (which he delivered before even 20% of the total soldiers lost had been killed). Anyways, Brown makes Bush's foolish speech seem like the St. Chrispins day speech in Shakespeare's Henry V.

[krhagan19]

Side Note: Gordon Brown has brought shame and infamy to her Majesties Government. Under the laws that have not been ammended since the 1750's that is high treason and an offense that was punishable with death until the last few decades of the 20th Century.

[this post was edited due to questionable content. keep it appropriate for all ages]