VOTE 16
Alongside the lowering of the voting age, we’ re also advocating for further civic education in schools throughout the country, like we have at Sevenoaks. As a team, we have worked to raise awareness through schools, social groups and other campaigners. We have created a website and a petition to support this cause, and given talks to students at Walthamstow Hall and the Sevenoaks Youth Council. We even visited the Houses of Parliament – we were personally toured by Sevenoaks MP Laura Trott’ s team and shown how all the important decisions are made. We even sat in the seats of the House of Lords and House of Commons.
Students created a campaign group to support national efforts to lower the voting age, seeing the year end with a landmark change to UK suffrage.
For the last decade, the Labour party has promised to lower the voting age to 16, following countries such as Austria, Scotland and Malta. However, this promise has never been honoured. Until now. On 17 July the UK Government announced that it was expanding the voting age for all UK elections to young people aged 16 and 17.
Sevenoaks students launched their Vote16 campaign in September 2024. The associated Vote16 service group was introduced as a way for us to take the initiative and get directly involved in our country’ s politics, even though we don’ t have a vote yet. In the words of the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer,‘[ I ] f you’ re old enough to go out and work, if you’ re old enough to pay taxes, then you are entitled to have a say on how your taxes are spent.’
In July we met with young people from around the UK to exchange campaigning ideas. The next day we went to the Churchill Room in the House of Commons. We briefed MPs, civil servants and even Rushanara Ali, the Minister for Democracy and Homelessness. Lord( David) Blunkett attended the event. Lord Blunkett congratulated the young people present and said that expanding the voting age was necessary to give life to our democracy. He warned that there were forces that were‘ corroding what we have built up over generations, our belief in ourselves, our belief that we can actually change the world through democracy, and if we don’ t stand up to it now, we will regret it at length later’.
But it is not just the UK. In the span of a year, our campaign has expanded internationally, with branches now in Poland, Italy, Albania and even Ghana, partners in Ireland and in Canada, and support globally.
As an experience, Vote16 has really helped me assimilate politics – it is no longer some boring, distant idea, but rather a nuanced, interesting topic for me. It helped me think more about my future – debate over free travel throughout the EU, climate change and freedom of speech are issues that directly affect me, yet with no vote, my say has almost no weight.
Moyo Amure, Year 10 vote16uk
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