The arguments for putting down the voting age to 16 for local council elections, which have now been extended to a call to allow those aged 16 and 17 to vote in the spring hunting referendum too, have led to the inevitable. If we allow those who are 16 and 17 to vote in council elections, then we should go the whole hog and give them the vote in general elections too, some commentators have said. It's only logical, they argue.
Well, actually it isn't logical at all. I am all for allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in council elections and referendums, but totally against a situation in which electors for parliament are any younger than the age at which adulthood begins at law, which is 18. The reason for this is simple: logic and the law. And I don't mean the law which says how old you have to be to vote, either. People younger than 18 cannot be given the vote in general elections for what should be a very obvious reason but apparently is not. You can't have legislators who are under 18. A legislator has to be a fully-fledged adult at law. You can't have people making laws who are not legally adults themselves.
One or two commentators arguing to lower the voting age in general elections to 16 seem to be patently unaware of the direct link between the right to vote in a election and the right to stand in that election. If you are eligible to vote, you are eligible to stand. That is automatic at law. So if people aged 16 and 17 are given the right to vote in general elections, it follows that they will also have the right to stand in those elections. But here's the rub: general elections are particular because they elect our national legislators. Those who have a seat in parliament, whether on the government side or the Opposition, are exactly that: legislators. They make laws. That is what members of parliament do - they are called legislators because they make our laws. A 16-year-old legislator? Sorry, but I don't think so. Somebody who cannot, at law, be party to a contract cannot then make legislation for the rest of us.
I know that the inevitable response to this will be: come on, no 16-year-old candidate is ever going to pull in enough votes to get into parliament. That's hardly the point. If you can't have a 16-year-old legislator, then you can't have a 16-year-old legislator, so 16-year-olds are not eligible to stand for election to parliament, and it follows from there that they can't have a vote in the parliamentary elections either.
So why are local council elections and referendums different? Local councils don't legislate. Local councillors don't do anything that 16-year-olds are not allowed to do. People aged 16 and 17 should be allowed to vote in local council elections because there are no obvious obstacles to having councillors of that age. Referendums are not held to elect anyone to anything, so the reciprocity of eligibility to vote and eligibility to stand does not come into it. On 11 April, those aged 16 and 17 will be able to vote in the council elections but not the referendum on spring hunting. I found this very odd because there is a far stronger argument for giving them the vote in a referendum than there is for council elections.
In my view, there is another strong argument against having electors aged 16 and 17, but this is an emotional one and quite unrelated to the rational one outlined above. Once a person becomes an elector, he or she is essentially a fully-enfranchised adult. Immediately, all the legal constraints on actions which require people to be 18 are undermined, weakened or rendered null. So effectively, we will have a situation where adulthood begins at 16, and that is not a good state of affairs at all. There is a reason why there is general consensus on adulthood beginning at 18 at law - because that is roughly where it begins in reality. We all know that a 16-year-old is nowhere near an 18-year-old in terms of maturity, that 18 is when you first start getting yourself on some kind of an even keel. We can't force legal adulthood down to 16 - not only would it have deleterious consequences for society in general, but it would be grossly unfair to people that age. They deserve to have those two years free of the responsibilities at law that come only too soon.
I heard some people arguing that if the law allows people to marry at 16 (ah, but only with their parents' consent), then the law should also allow them to vote in general elections. That's a total non sequitur. For a start, the law which allows 16-year-olds to marry is in itself very wrong and a complete archaism in the 21st century. It is a relic of another age when the sole purpose of girls was to find a husband, so if they found one at 16, then jolly good. It was also there to allow girls that young to be married if they fell pregnant, but society is no longer what it was and there is general consensus now that pregnant 16-year-olds should not marry, more so if the marriage is to a boy the same age. It just doesn't happen anymore. Isn't of using the law on marriage at 16 to argue for other rights and duties for people that age, we should be calling on parliament to amend the Marriage Act so that nobody under 18 can enter into a contract of marriage, their parents' consent being rendered irrelevant. People that young are not fit and able to enter into such an undertaking. It is wrong to make it legally possible for them to do so.
No, 16- and 17-year-olds shouldn't have the vote in general elections. Quite apart from the argument that they cannot be legislators so they cannot vote for legislators, I truly believe they should be left free of adult responsibility and adult concerns until the proper age of 18. That comes soon enough, and let's face it, it lasts for the rest of our lives. So really, what on earth is the rush?