Voting age
[1] The effort was, like later legislation expanding voting rights for women and impoverished whites, in part an attempt to skew the electorate further in favor of Afrikaner interests against uitlanders.
[7] In the late 20th and early 21st centuries voting ages were lowered to 18 in Japan,[8] India, Switzerland, Austria, the Maldives, and Morocco.
[10] 16-years-old is the lowest minimum age globally for national elections, while the highest is 25-years-old which is only the case in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
[15] During the 2000s several proposals for a reduced voting age were put forward in U.S. states, including California, Florida and Alaska,[16] but none were successful.
[20] Demands to reduce the voting age to 16 years were again brought forward by activists of the school strike for climate movement in several countries (including Germany and the UK).
Greater controversy surrounded the other provisions of the bill concerning the Briefwahl, or postal vote, and the extension of the legislative period for the National Council from four to five years.
[46][better source needed] In 2020, Canadian Senator Marilou McPhedran introduced a bill to lower the federal voting age from 18 to 16.
[42] Several weeks later, Taylor Bachrach of the New Democratic Party (NDP) introduced a private member's bill to lower the voting age to 16.
[60] As part of their 2021 coalition deal, the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed to lower the voting age for European Elections to 16 within the course of the 20th Bundestag.
A bill to lower the voting age for municipal elections reached the final reading in 2018, but was filibustered by opponents until the close of the parliamentary session.
[68] The Bill would have sought to reduce the voting age to 16 in New Zealand and make civics education part of the compulsory curriculum in schools.
[69] Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern subsequently announced that a bill to lower the voting age to 16 would be debated in parliament, requiring a supermajority to pass.
[71] The Representation of the People Act 1969 lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 for elections to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the first major democratic nation to do so.
[72] The reduction of the voting age to 16 in the United Kingdom was first given serious consideration in 1999, when the House of Commons considered in Committee an amendment proposed by Simon Hughes to the Representation of the People Bill.
[78] On the same day the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, indicated in an article in The Guardian that he favored a reduction provided it was made concurrently with effective citizenship education.
[79] The Ministry of Justice published in 2007 a Green Paper entitled The Governance of Britain, in which it proposed the establishment of a "Youth Citizenship Commission".
In July 2024 however, Keir Starmer the current leader of the UK Labour Party, became elected as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Prior to the 2024 election, the voting age in both Scotland and Wales was and is already set at 16, by the relevant governments of both UK nations (see detail specifics below).
[90] The Welsh Assembly's Commission, the corporate body, introduced a bill in 2019 to reduce the voting age to 16 and change the name to Senedd.
"[119] Seventeen states permit 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections and caucuses if they will be 18 by election day: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico,[120] North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia.
[122] On 3 April 2019, Andrew Yang became the first major presidential candidate to advocate for the United States to lower its voting age to 16.
[126] In 2013, the City of Takoma Park, Maryland, became the first place in the United States to lower its voting age to 16 for municipal elections and referendums.
[132] In Massachusetts, the state has blocked efforts to lower the voting age for local elections to 16 in Ashfield, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Concord, Harwich, Lowell, Northampton, Shelburne, Somerville, and Wendell.
[133][134] During the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries, Vivek Ramaswamy announced that he favored raising the voting age to 25 in most circumstances.
The policy change, which would have to be done through a constitutional amendment, would only allow for citizens between 18 and 24 to vote if they are enlisted in the military, work as first-responder personnel, or pass a civics test.
Cilia Flores, president of the National Assembly, announced that the Mixed Committee for Constitutional Reform had found the idea acceptable.
There are occasional calls for a maximum voting age, on the grounds that older people have less of a stake in the future of the country or jurisdiction.
[137] In fact, however, the only jurisdiction with a maximum voting age is the Vatican City State whose sovereign, (the Pope) is elected by the College of Cardinals.
Examples of places with full enfranchisement for those aged 16 or 17 include Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Greece, and Indonesia.
Voting age 16 for municipal elections: Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia.
