Should 16-year-olds like Stella and Jayla be allowed to vote?
www.abc.net.au
Sixteen-year-olds can learn to drive, get a job, pay taxes and be on the Organ Donor Register, but they are considered too young to vote. Should they also have a stake in deciding their future?
    • zik@aussie.zone
      11·
      9 months ago

      Compulsory is such a good system. It doesn’t take long. It’s on a weekend so it’s not inconvenient. You get a sausage at the sausage sizzle and you do your vote. There’s a real holiday atmosphere. And it produces much more representative results. Brexit wouldn’t have happened if they had compulsory voting so there’s no denying it’s valuable.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        It doesn’t take long

        Urgh. Tell that to ECQ at last month’s council elections. Absolute fucking farcical job they did running those elections.

        • Irina@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Changing the voting age is one change, but making voting non compulsory for some voters starts to get messy. It would also be an easy thing for a government to tweak to reduce youth voter turnout by shifting that number around.

        • zik@aussie.zone
          2·
          9 months ago

          Why not start them off in the way you mean to continue? It’s not like there are any significant downsides.

        • jagungal@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          The push is to lower the voting age to 16. Plus, I doubt making it optional until 18 would change many people’s minds on whether or not we should lower the voting age.