Is it appropriate for the voting age to be lowered to 16? (pro) 2-1-6 Yennie Ebihara Are you a youth that is desperately waiting to become 18 for your voice to be heard? According to votesat16.org, over 1.5 million of 16 to 17 year olds are denied the vote in just the UK and many teens around the world, regardless of potentially having the civic knowledge needed to vote due to 10 to 100 times more access to information, are unable to have a voice (debatingeurope.eu). This topic is also often talked about and the government has even started to take action in countries like Austria. Nevertheless, 16 year olds are clearly mature enough to vote, do not lack any knowledge needed to vote, and allowing them to vote will enable a whole new age group to include themselves and help increase voter turnout. Therefore, despite it being a debatable topic, 16 year olds should be given the right to vote. First and foremost, 16 year olds are mature enough to vote. Connor Dwyer, a member of the United …show more content…
In almost all of the past elections, about half of the voting age population did not actually vote in the elections(mashables.com). We can say this by looking at the 2012 elections in which there were “241 million people of voting age, but only 130.2 million actually cast ballots in the general election — a turnout rate of just 58.6 percent” claims Brad Plumer from Vox.com. If the voting percentage stays this way, it can make it hard to run even a decent democracy. To solve this problem, we can teach 16 year olds to hold an interest in voting which would also influence their parents or other family members who do not vote to at least hold an interest in politics and possibly start voting. This movement would result in a “trickle up” effect, and affect voting rates on the long run (fairvote.org). From this, although not immediately it is definite that 16 year olds will ultimately help raise voter