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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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There's not a lot of good arguments against lowering the voter age limit if you try to debate this policy in a way that is agnostic of which parties one thinks will benefit.
Same but reverse about the other election reform from this government - if it wasn't for CSU and the Left being the biggest losers of that reform, I don't think many would agree that it's democratic to just toss out the votes of one election (direct mandate) based on the outcome of a separate election (proportional vote).
In short: When you are party-agnostic: U16 vote is okay, the hasty patch for the parliament size is not.
I think the main argument is that 16 y.o. are old enought to work and pay taxes and social contributions. So they should be able to vote. Also The voting age is 16 in many states. The maturity argument is really hard, as it depends so much on the individual. I think 16 year olds generelly possess the same mental capacity to understand party policies and have enough knowledge of how the government system works to be able to vote.
In fact, I find any argument that relies on the "maturity" or "capacity" of the voter extremely suspicious. There are people even today that genuinely believe that franchise must be restricted by means of literacy/mental capacity tests (transparent attempts to disenfranchise political opponents, be it conservatives fearing a more progressive youth or progressives fearing a more conservative older population).
The argument of relevance/degree of exposure to political decisions is indeed much better, than even going doing the maturity rabbit hole and trying to argue for a lower voter age that way.
Oh I agree. I personally think there should be as fee restricitions to vote as possible. I think that lowering the age restrictions, and thus allowing more people to vote is a huge win for democracy.
Throwing out all of the direct mandate votes would be democratic again, though.
It's definitely a better option than the current reform.