Thursday, February 5, 2015
Votes at 16 : an idea whose time has come
Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new article at the International Business Times about the plans to reduce the voting age to 16 in time for next year's Scottish Parliament election. You can read it HERE. (It's also on Yahoo HERE.)
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For as long as I can remember, in Scotland you were an adult at 16, it is bizarre that the English idea of votes at 21 then 18 held sway over then natural identity of Scotland.
ReplyDeleteI think that since taxation without representation is fair, pensioners should not get the vote. After all they no longer pay tax, and they are gonna die soon. What should they get to say in England's future.
ReplyDeletePensioners do pay income tax, if they have enough earnings to take them over the personal allowance. That's not as hard as it sounds because the state pension is taxable.
DeleteYou're thinking of NI deductions.
DeleteThey also pay VAT.
DeleteAnd council tax. Road tax too.
DeleteYou can also e.g. fine them or put them in jail depending on whether they commit a crime; what constitutes a crime or civil offence being decided by the government people vote for.
Air Passenger Duty too
DeleteThe Americans had one thing right, 'No taxation without representation'. I paid tax but couldn't vote? We've levelled the school leaving age, age of consent for both straight and gay, age of marriage and joining the army to the age of 16. Trusted to do all this it seems only reasonable for young men and women to get the vote too. How can anyone argue against it?
ReplyDeleteIt would be better to simply give every living person the vote. Those who are too young to exercise it could have their parents as their proxy. Then parents could decide when the child is ready to vote.
ReplyDeleteThat might help offset the power of the pensioner vote.
The power of the pensioner vote would be neutralised if younger voters (and I'm in that age bracket myself) actually went out and exercised their vote. I saw a recent poll with 65+ saying they were ~85% likely to vote v's ~50% for those in the 18-24 bracket.
DeleteThat would of course help but it wouldn't neutralise it as there are still many more of them.
DeleteThey perhaps should be shamed into voting for the interests of their grandchildren.
Still I do think that the interests of children are grossly underrepresented in our system.
"They perhaps should be shamed into voting for the interests of their grandchildren."
DeleteAside from the point that it's open to debate exactly what kind of politics is in their grandchildrens' interests, there is always the little problem of the secret ballot. Nothing stops someone from lying about how they voted. I've definitely knew of people throughout the campaign who, faced with a friend or relative who quite stridently encouraged them to vote Yes, ultimately decided to tell a little white lie that they're voting Yes while quietly voting No in the privacy of the ballot box.
And of course it's well known that a lot of people did the opposite as well, and were too embarrassed to admit to relatives or friends that they were voting Yes.
DeleteOn Grim's original point, I'd be uncomfortable about reducing the voting age to zero, because that would effectively undermine the principle of one person, one vote (parents would have multiple votes in practice). I think the voting age should only go as low as is consistent with the individual actually making his or her own informed decision about how to vote. That might be a bit lower than 16, but probably not much.
For strident, read passionate. Really not the kind of thing to be encouraged, active participation and open discussion on matters that directly affect everyone by everyone. (and that's even with a secret ballot, eh Stoat?).
Deletebraco
Pro-union parties apparently don't think ballots are secret. Not if you postal vote anyway.
DeleteI mentioned before that George Foulkes (Yes, I know) tweeted of a "Significant new polling development" in the new year. Looks like we've found out what he meant by that.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he'd be pushing this if Labour were 10 points ahead for the UK and on 42% in Scotland.
DeleteSure I don't imagine it will get anywhere - would be scary if it did - but it shows why we need rid of Westminster. We can't even vote this idiot out yet have to pay his salary.
Personally, I've never thought that polls affect VI to any measurable degree.
I mean e.g. the SNP surge after the iref came about itself for obvious reasons, not because people saw a small rise in SNP share and swung to the SNP as a result of that rise, with this self perpetuating or something. You have countless examples where trying to say poll movements were the result of poll movements is just ludicrous.
Ed's unpopular in Scotland because he's pretty crap. Jeez, he threatened to put up border posts and take oor poond off us if we personally voted No or Yes but the result was Yes. Of course he was going to way down in the ratings in Scotland. Bacon sandwichgate is just another example of what a numpty he is.
I won't argue with any of that. Sounds a lot like making excuses from Foulkes.
DeleteI'm happy with voting at 16 coz I know the votes will be heavily in the direction of travel I support but I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with this ploy...and a ploy is surely has been.
ReplyDeleteEvidence for that claim?
Delete