Legal Age to Start Voting

The only known maximum voting age is that of the Holy See, where the right to vote for the election of a new pope is limited to cardinals under the age of 80. The voting age is a minimum legal age that a person must reach before being eligible to vote in a public election. Today, the most common voting age is 18; However, the voting age is currently 16 to 25 (see list below). Most countries have set a minimum voting age, which is often set out in their constitutions. Voting is compulsory in a number of countries, while it is optional in most countries. (b) Any citizen who has attained the age of eighteen years not later than the day of an ordinary election may apply for admission to vote. If such a citizen is deemed qualified, he becomes an elector on his eighteenth birthday. The Registrar shall add the name of each person making an application under this Subdivision to the list of registers and, if applicable, to the list of registrations and on the date of coming into force. The registrars may include the name of each of these persons at the end of the register and registration lists of the electoral district. The Scottish National Party conference voted unanimously on 27 October 2007 in favour of a policy to lower the voting age to 16 (the age of majority in Scotland) and a campaign to transfer the necessary powers to the Scottish Parliament. [59] In June 2015, the Scottish Parliament unanimously decided to lower the voting age to 16 for elections to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish local elections.

[44] This is an injustice that should be corrected. All citizens should be able to vote, regardless of age. The minimum voting age should be zero, with parents and guardians voting for their young children. As these children grow, parents can incorporate the right to vote into gradually increasing the independence and responsibility of young people until their children end up voting for themselves, probably in their early teens. On Monday 29 January 2018, the Maltese Parliament debated lowering the voting age to 16 for parliamentary elections, elections to the European Parliament and referendums. In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. In recent years, campaigns to extend the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds have gained momentum. On 3 July 2007, the UK Ministry of Justice published a Green Paper entitled The Governance of Britain, in which it proposed the establishment of a Youth Citizenship Commission. [53] The Commission would consider lowering the voting age.

Presenting the document to the House of Commons, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “Although the voting age has been 18 since 1969, it is right to investigate in the context of this debate and hear from young people themselves whether lowering that age would increase turnout.” [54] New Zealand Green MP Sue Bradford announced on June 21, 2007 that she intended to introduce her Civic Education and Voting Age Act at the next opportunity, when a place would be available for MPs to consider bills. [42] When this happened on July 25, Bradford abandoned the idea, citing a negative public reaction. [43] The bill would have sought to lower the voting age in New Zealand to 16 and to integrate civics into the compulsory curriculum in schools. Men in military service who turned 19 during World War I were eligible to vote in 1918, regardless of age, under the People`s Representation Act of 1918, which also allowed some women over 30 to vote. The Representation of the People (Equal Suffrage) Act of 1928,[45] lowered the voting age for women to 21. However, research on countries with younger voting age shows that 16-year-olds are just as motivated to vote as their older counterparts. Research also shows that teens have the opportunity to vote that represent their best interests. On Tuesday, March 5, the House of Representatives voted on a bill introduced by Rep.

Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) to lower the voting age to 16. After the 2006 elections, the victorious SPÖ-ÖVP coalition resigned on 12 September. January 2007 that one of their measures would be to lower the voting age in elections in all provinces and at all levels in Austria to 16 years. [30] The policy was implemented by a government announcement on March 14,[31] and on May 2, a draft law amending the Constitution was submitted to Parliament. [32] [33] On June 5, the National Council approved the draft law on the recommendation of its Constitutional Committee. [23] [25] [34] When the legislation was passed by the House, there was relatively little opposition to the reduction, with four out of five parties explicitly supporting it; In fact, there have been disputes over which party first came up with the idea. The remaining provisions of the bill on postal voting and the extension of the National Council`s term of office from four to five years have sparked considerable controversy. [25] Another non-controversial inclusion was the lowering of the age of candidacy from 19 to 18. The Federal Council approved the draft law on 21 June without voting against it.

[35] The voting age was lowered when the provisions of the Act came into force on July 1, 2007. [36] Austria was thus the first member of the European Union and the first democracies in the developed world to adopt an electoral age of 16 for all purposes. [23] The lowering of the voting age has stimulated the political interest of young people in Austria. In Austria, more than sixteen and seventeen voted only from eighteen to twenty-one. When the right to vote was introduced in democracies, the voting age was generally set at 21 years or older. In the 1970s, many countries lowered the voting age to 18. Proposals to lower the voting age to 18 years or younger are currently under consideration in a number of countries. In 2013, the city of Takoma Park, Maryland, became the first place in the United States to lower the voting age for municipal elections and referendums to 16. [87] [88] In 2018, three other cities lowered the voting age to 16: Hyattsville and Greenbelt in Maryland and Berkeley in California (for school board elections only). [89] In 2018, a bill was proposed to the Council of the District of Columbia to lower the voting age to 16, which would make the Federal District the first jurisdiction to lower the voting age for federal elections.

[90] Others argued that instead of lowering the voting age to 16, people under 18 should generally not pay taxes, and a better solution is that those who do not pay income tax are also not eligible to vote. [12] Just because young people participate in protests doesn`t mean they`re ready to vote, critics of lowering the voting age say.