First Steps to Devolving the Franchise: Voting Age and Fast-tracked Powers
| Published date | 01 May 2015 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2015.0274 |
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
| Pages | 239-244 |
| Author | Heather Green |
Voting age is a reserved matter under the Scotland Act 1998 and will continue to be so for Westminster and European Parliamentary elections and for any referendums conducted on a UK-wide basis. The independence referendum offered a unique opportunity for the Scottish Parliament to experiment, on an exceptional basis, with lowering voting age. The measure, contained in the Scottish Independence Referendum (Franchise) Act 2013, now seems to be regarded as establishing a political precedent which it is the duty of government and Parliament to follow by offering younger voters Scottish Parliamentary voting rights also. While this is an understandable perception (especially on the part of the teenagers enfranchised in the referendum), it is also questionable: the referendum was a special political event. The referendum franchise law need not be read as a template for election law generally. It is arguable that permitting younger voters to take part in a rare (if perhaps not “once in a lifetime”) constitutional event is justifiable simply on the grounds of its special political significance. By contrast, general elections happen every four years in Scotland and younger voters will experience many repeat opportunities to participate when they reach voting age. However, the referendum enfranchisement of younger voters has made it politically difficult to resist calls to sustain their inclusion within an electorate to which in 2013 they were granted exceptional access. The policy issue of instituting a lower age of electoral majority within Scotland has not been fully canvassed or debated in Parliament and, given the party political consensus on the issue, it seems unlikely that future debate will provide a rigorous exploration of the arguments against change. The Smith Commission's recommendation for fast-tracked powers works from the dubious premise that the referendum experiment proved the case for lowering the general election voting age. As the continuing disagreement about lowering the voting age for Westminster elections shows, there is still room for argument about the matter.
See T W Chan and M Clayton, “Should the voting age be lowered to 16? Normative and empirical considerations” (2006) 54 Political Studies 533; A Mycock and J Tonge, “Ed Miliband should recognise that 16 and 17 year olds can be part of our democracy even if they do not have the vote”, Democratic Audit...
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