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Voting age to be lowered to 16 in UK by next general election
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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UK Politics
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General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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It's an odd issue for me. I'm not against it, but the number of politically aware 16yos I've met would be close to zero. That said, I don't think it really gets better by 18, so I have no good argument either way.
It just doesn't strike me as anything but an attempt to gerrymander along demographic lines and so I view it with cynicism.
How many 16 year olds have you met? The volume of politically aware adults I've met over the decades is genuinely disgusting...
I was the politically aware 16 year old thinking the war on terror and invasion of Iraq was the natural progression of western corporate imperialism.
I would say I’m wiser now at twice the age, but I and most of my class at school had fairly reasonable political views from my recollection; maybe a bit naive and simplistic in a few cases, and a little bit of groupthink going on, and at least one die hard communist (though I imagine he still is, so I doubt that affects much either way).
16yo is old enough to do pretty much all the other big decisions of an adult, so why not voting, they’re not really treated like children anymore by our society.