John MacDonald: What's so bad about 16-year-olds voting?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

I love it how when a 16-year-old does something like ram-raiding a shop or stealing a car, people bang on about them being old enough to know that what they did was wrong and how they made the decision to do whatever they did.

But then if we talk about voting, suddenly 16-year-olds have got no idea. Not capable of making decisions on their own, too young, no life experience.

And that’s exactly what we’ve been hearing from some people since the Supreme Court announced its view that not letting 16 and 17-year-olds vote here in New Zealand breaches the Bill of Rights.

And quick smart, following on from that, the Government has announced that legislation to reduce the voting age from 18 to 16 will be drawn up and considered by Parliament.

In some respects, it’ll be something of an academic exercise because, already, the National and ACT parties have made it clear they won’t support any change and so there won’t be the 75 percent support in Parliament that’s required to change the voting age. For parliamentary elections, anyway.

But it’s not so academic when it comes to local body elections. Because only 50 percent support is needed in Parliament for that to happen and, as the numbers stand at the moment, Labour could get that one across the line.

And I think they should do it.

I’m not the only one who thinks that. You may remember that, not that long ago, the organisation that represents local councils all around the country - Local Government New Zealand - came out after the recent local body elections and said it thought the voting age in council elections should be changed from 18 to 16.

And one of the main concerns people expressed back then, was that 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds are all a bunch of woke lefties and if they were allowed to vote they’d all vote for the Greens and Labour and we’d all be off to hell in a handbasket.

Funny thing is, I was talking to the teenagers at home last night and they were saying how a lot of kids have apparently been saying they’d support ACT if they were allowed to vote, because they like the videos David Seymour does on Tik Tok.

Which just goes to show, doesn’t it, that whatever age you are - your decision to vote for a particular person or party can be made on the shallowest basis.

And that, in no way, is limited to 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds.

In some ways, those of us who are a bit long in the tooth are potentially the worst offenders when it comes to shallow voting decisions. Because, unlike 16 year-olds and 17-year-olds, we are focused on the here and now. What’s in it for me.

Potentially, the younger you are, the more likely you are to support candidates who are prepared to take the long view and not just dish out lollies for gullible voters to suck on.

In my experience, the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds of today are so much more advanced in their ability to think more broadly about the world around them than I ever was at their age.

Which is where I think the problem lies in terms of convincing a lot of people that someone who is 16 has the capacity to choose who to vote for. Because, naturally, we think back to what we were like when we were their age, and a lot of us probably think we wouldn’t have had a clue back then and assume the teenagers of today are no different.

But is that really a good reason to oppose changing the voting age? Because of our memories of what we were like and how we thought about things when we were young? I don’t think it’s a good reason at all.

What’s more, people in prison serving sentences of less than three years are allowed to vote. That’s been happening for a couple of years now in New Zealand. And you could say, couldn’t you, that someone convicted of a crime has shown they are incapable of making good decisions. Yet, we let them vote.

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