The push to lower the voting age has re-emerged in response to multiple pressures facing young people. So, how does Australia compare to the rest of the world?

Lowering the voting age to 16 would improve the health and well-being of young people, the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) has proposed.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
    2·
    3 days ago

    Not Australian but I definitely wouldn’t want 16-year-old me to have voted in the '90s, but that may have been a product of where I was in the rural US, access to information, etc. Maybe it’s different there and now.

    • threeduck
      2·
      3 days ago

      I wouldn’t have let 20 year old me vote, as a literal racist conservative. I don’t think there’s a definitive age where people grow out of their god awful opinions (read: the existence of the Republican party).

      But the average 16 year old is HUGELY more politically aware than the 16 year olds of yore. Im for it

      • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
        2·
        3 days ago

        That is why I hedged a bit in my last sentence; there is a lot more info available today and through a greater variety of sources. Disinformation, though, is certainly a problem moreso than it was when I was younger.

        I was one of those american far-right evangelical conservatives and grew up where it was not uncommon to hear “that’s jewish” to mean something uncool and hear about “the synagogues of satan” in church. I definitely stopped feeling that way once I got out on my own and out of that bubble and would be horrified the impact that my decisions would have had on others. The pastor at one church we went to actually came over in I think 1989 or 1990 from Wagga Wagga and I spent a fair bit of time with them growing up.