London — Britain will decrease the voting age from 18 to 16 by the following nationwide election as a part of measures to extend democratic participation, the federal government introduced Thursday. The middle-left Labour Get together pledged earlier than it was elected in July 2024 to decrease the voting age for elections to Britain’s Parliament. Scotland and Wales already let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in native and regional elections.
Britain will be a part of a brief listing of nations the place the voting age is 16, together with Austria, Brazil and Ecuador. A handful of European Union international locations, together with Belgium, Germany and Malta, enable 16-year-olds to vote in elections to the European Parliament, however not their nationwide legislatures.
The transfer comes alongside wider reforms that embody tightening marketing campaign finance guidelines to cease shell firms with unclear possession from donating to political events. Democracy Minister Rushanara Ali mentioned the change would strengthen safeguards towards overseas interference in British politics. There can even be harder sentences for individuals convicted of intimidating political candidates.
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Moreover, Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s authorities mentioned it’s going to introduce automated voter registration and permit voters to make use of financial institution playing cards as a type of identification at polling stations.
The earlier Conservative authorities launched a requirement for voters to point out picture identification in 2022, a measure it mentioned would fight fraud. Critics argued it might disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, notably the younger, the poor and members of ethnic minorities. The legislation sarcastically caught out the person who had helped to usher it onto the books, when former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was turned away from his native polling station final yr after forgetting to convey his picture ID.
Britain’s elections watchdog company, the Electoral Fee, estimates that about 750,000 individuals didn’t vote in final yr’s election as a result of they lacked ID.
Turnout within the 2024 election was 59.7%, the bottom degree in additional than twenty years.
Harry Quilter-Pinner, head of left-leaning suppose tank the Institute for Public Coverage Analysis, mentioned the modifications had been “the most important reform to our electoral system since 1969,” when the voting age was lowered to 18 from 21.
The modifications have to be authorised by Parliament, however Starmer’s Labour Get together at the moment holds an amazing majority of the seats, so it’s prone to go simply. The following nationwide election have to be held by 2029, but it surely might, theoretically, be known as earlier than that by the federal government.
“For too lengthy, public belief in our democracy has been broken and religion in our establishments has been allowed to say no,” Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner mentioned. “We’re taking motion to interrupt down limitations to participation that may guarantee extra individuals have the chance to have interaction in U.Okay. democracy.”
Stuart Fox, a politics lecturer on the College of Exeter who has studied youth voting, mentioned it is “removed from clear” whether or not reducing the voting age truly will increase youth engagement.
“It’s proper to assist younger individuals be heard,” he mentioned. “However there are different measures that are simpler at getting younger individuals to vote – notably these from the poorest backgrounds who’re by far the least prone to vote – akin to beefing up the citizenship curriculum or increasing the supply of volunteering applications in faculties.”
