A LOT of scepticism about allowing under 18s to vote seems to come back to the fear that young people lack sufficient knowledge about the world around them to make informed political decisions. These criticisms however, whilst containing a grain of truth, often fail to recognise that these generalisations are at best averages, and ignore the large number of young people today who are better informed, better educated and better placed to make political decisions, even than a significant number of their older peers.

In fact, an amazing phenomenon about intelligence, dubbed the ‘Flynn effect,’ is that if you go by the results of IQ tests, average intelligence has been steadily rising for decades. Contrary to the stereotypes that many like to believe about millennials being brain-dead, social media addicted loafers, the current generation are in fact one of the best educated and most intelligent who have ever lived. Denying younger people the vote on the basis of their intelligence then is becoming an increasingly outmoded argument; one which, if it hasn’t already, must at some point inevitably fail.

In addition, there are also important positives that an extension of the franchise could bring. For example, the current low turnout amongst young people is partly caused by a cycle of self-fulfilling expectations. Many young people do not vote because they do not think politicians have their interests at heart, and many politicians do not have young people’s interests at heart precisely because young people do not vote and hold them to account. 

The extension of the franchise is not only justified on the basis of intelligence therefore, but could also be an important step to help signal to young people that their voices matter and help break a cycle of political apathy for generations to come. 

JACK SHERER-CLARKE
Barnsley