CJ

Agree with you completely. I would also add that the requirement for preferential voting be dispensed with.

However, this topic has provided a venue for people to vent hysteria about the behaviour of our youth, just as has been done for generations. The more things change...

Dear Fractelle in Queensland State elections we have optional preferential voting. If you don't wish to exhaust your vote you don't have to.
And CJ the only compulsory part of our voting system is rocking up to a polling station or applying for postal or absentee ballot papers. What you do with the papers then is up to you.

Hugh Jorgensen's concluding paragraph perhaps gives insight into understanding a key element of the proposal to lower the voting age. He says:



"But the best reason for lowering the age barrier
is that the senior years of high school are the best,
and possibly the last, opportunity we have to sit future
generations down, promote collaborative discussion on issues
they feel are important; explain why every vote matters;
why it’s worth filling out an enrolment form;"




Because there are going to be lots of enrolment forms put into the system if this proposal of reducing the voting age is adopted.




There are around 250,000 persons in each of the 16 and 17-year-old cohorts of the Australian population, a total of around half a million potentially eligible new electors. Someone needs more names.

That's what articles like this are 'scenery' for: provision of an at least subliminally acceptable reason explaining what by all other measures would ordinarily be a completely inexplicable influx of new names onto the electoral rolls. That's what happened the last time the voting age was lowered, in March 1973.

By Saturday 8 December 1973, the occasion of a referendum, and the printing of up-to-date electoral roll supplementary lists, there was "a total of around 550,000 enrolments ... on the rolls without satisfactory explanation ...". The words quoted come from page 27 of a study titled "Australia: Aggregate Enrolment Levels 1947-1987", which formed part of a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters of the Australian Parliament. That study can be downloaded as a .pdf document by clicking on Submission No. 123 in the list of submissions on this web page:

http://aph.gov.au/house/committee/em/elect04/subs.htm

If, in the circumstance of reducing the voting age to 16, the public can be encouraged to believe that the bulk of the 16 and 17-year-old cohorts were to have been sat down while still at school to complete electoral enrolment forms, the aggregate enrolment level credibility gap can be closed.

Time to ask yourself a few questions, Hugh.

The reason that insurance companies have premiums on drivers below 25 is not because they are inexperienced (new drivers at 30 are not penalised) but because their judgement is not fully developed.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-the-teen-brain-too-rat

For those without subscriptions to Scientific American, the gist of the article is that while by 18 their judgement of right and wrong is developed, their ability to accurately evaluate consequences is only completely developed by 25 (but mostly by 20).

Below 18 the law considers that even their lowered ability for reason provides them protection from the full force of the law (see legal competence) which is hardly a resounding endorsement to vote.

The previous voting age or age of majority was 21 which would be more in line with fully developed reasoning, however, as at 18, we are deemed to adult and can serve in the military, one cannot raise the voting age above 18.

Lowering the voting age will not deliver many votes based on sound independent judgement..

CJ, whilst some at 16 might show signs of insight most do not.

SM,
You beat me to the punch, I understand it has something to do with the development of the frontal cortex the decision making part of the brain.

Other research has shown there are other short coming in thee immature brain that can and does impede the value of their thinking ability. However, simply having the equipment doesn't guarantee it will be used or properly.

Prof Greenfields (world renown specialist) also cautions not to under estimate the importance of conditioning (nurture).

NB Because these conclusions are based on statistical conclusions it therefore it therefore has the potential for statistical aberration or exceptions.

This would indicate that the ideal would be on a case by case exception. For all practical reasons I guess I would err on the side of the lowest common denominator.... and vote a (qualified) No.

C'mon CJ and Fractelle

You are better than that, it is not hysteria - just a different point of view.

I am not sure that the incompetency of some adults is an argument for inviting more incompetence albeit a younger age group.

I won't lose any sleep if 16 year olds are given the vote but there are certainly far more electoral reforms I can think of to improve the system, than giving younger people the vote, including a greater expansion of participatory democracy via referenda.