Should the voting age be lowered to sixteen? Normative and empirical considerations

This article is an examination of the issue of whether the age of electoral majority should be lowered to sixteen. We consider and reject several arguments raised by both sides of the voting age debate. The key issue, we claim, is the political maturity of young people. Drawing on empirical data collected in nationally representative surveys, we argue that the weight of such evidence suggests that young people are, to a significant degree, politically less mature than older people, and that the voting age should not be lowered to sixteen.Citation: Wing Chan, T. & Clayton, M. (2006). 'Should the voting age be lowered to sixteen? Normative and empirical considerations', Political Studies, 54(3), 533-558. [The definitive version is available at http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0032-3217]. The full-text of this article is not available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. N.B. Tak Wing Chan is now based at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford