Explain arguments in favour of lowering the voting age.

In the past and present, many groups argue that 16 and 17 year olds should have the right to vote and not wait until they are 18. This is argued due to the significance and how much of an impact the lowering of the voting age would have on the political portrait. Not only would lowering the voting age add an extra 1.5 million opinions to the electorate, which could and would give parties in the running more potential to be elected as they would appeal to a wider public and be better representatives, but this would also help with the First Past The Post poll system. Effectively this means that there would be a greater number of people as part of the Parliament because more people would be represented and therefore this would make politicians more accountable for their decisions and on how they represent the public. Decreasing the voting age is also a good thing because, as there is a greater number of people voting the elected MP’s would have a greater legitimacy. However, this argument has flaws. The Scottish referendum would be an example of this because people that were the ages of 16 and 17 had a majority vote for Scottish independence whereas the overall vote was a no and this was due to the greater voting percentage of people of an older age. This could show us how because 16 and 17 year olds votes made no effect on the overall vote whatsoever. Since vote is all speculation in reality how many teens do we believe to actually follow what they vote for if it doesn’t come out in the final result? Therefore due to the people that are 16 and 17 being in the minority they would not get represented and therefore an argument to why the voting age shouldn’t be lowered is that 1.5 million votes would not make a big difference to the rest of the UK.
Another reason to why 16 and 17 year olds should be allowed to vote is because lowering the voting age will increase political participation. This would happen as getting young people engaged with decision making in politics would help provide more than one basic solution that people that have a higher age would think to solve the problem whereas there could be new solutions. Not only but lowering the voting age would help solve a big issue that the UK political system is facing as over the years political participation has declined. Not only declined but significantly as the general election turnout of 1979 was at 76.0% whereas in 2010 the general election turnout was at 65.2%. This is a big disadvantage as political participation is needed to maintain democracy in a country. By being an inactive citizen this could lead the UK to becoming an autocratic government which would mean that people’s rights and freedom would be forgotten about. Therefore lowering the voting age can help prevent this from happening as