Agreed on both points. Whatever is going wrong in society these days, lowered levels of voter maturity isn't the answer.
That's not an old man's opinion, but a former 16-year-old's.
That's not an old man's opinion, but a former 16-year-old's.
Who among them will? I’d guess the most engaged and the most based (for lack of a better word), so probably not much difference from the current electorate, except that youth skews left.
That's one of those time-honored political truisms that turns out to be based on... not much of anything. Trump made massive inroads with younger voters this time around.
It's all about outreach (and, in the US, Christian youth evangelism.) It's the stated goal of the American right(1) to dismantle public education precisely for that purpose.
1: https://civilrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Project-2...
In the US, I can see letting 16 year olds vote bring up the average level of "maturity". Older voters brains have been too cooked by watching decades of Fox News.
At some point we have to decide whether democracy is a means to an end -- a stable, peaceful, prosperous, just, and exemplary society -- or an end in itself. Lowering the voting age certainly serves the latter goal.
Both countries failed to fall apart from this measure :)