On April 3, 2019, Andrew Yang became the first major presidential candidate to advocate for the United States to lower the voting age to 16. [91] By age 16, Americans have no limits on their work and they pay taxes. According to Yang, their livelihoods are directly affected by the legislation, and so they should be allowed to vote for their representatives. [92] When the right to vote was introduced in democracies, the voting age was generally set at 21 years or older. In the 1970s, many countries lowered the voting age to 18. Proposals to lower the voting age to 18 years or younger are currently under consideration in a number of countries. The France uses closed lists, which do not allow voters to change the order of candidates on the list. To participate in the municipal elections of March 15 and 22, 2020, applications for registration must be submitted no later than March 7, 2020. February 2020. The countries of Oman, Kuwait and Indonesia have not yet expressed interest in electing their police and army. Guatemala also bans active members of the armed forces from voting, and they are even confined to their barracks on election day.
3. Possible custodial sentence. The non-voter may face jail time as a punishment, but we are not aware of any documented cases. This can also happen in countries like Australia where a fine is common. In cases where the non-voter does not pay the fine after a reminder or repeated refusal, the courts may impose a custodial sentence. This is usually imprisonment for non-payment of the fine, not imprisonment for non-election. Men in military service who turned 19 during World War I were eligible to vote in 1918, regardless of age, under the People`s Representation Act of 1918, which also allowed some women over 30 to vote. The Representation of the People (Equal Suffrage) Act of 1928,[45] lowered the voting age for women to 21. Research conducted by the YouGov survey in 2018 shows that while the public is still opposed to it, there is growing support for franchise renewal. In May 2019, all major parties except the Conservatives lowered the age to 16. Some have argued that the Conservatives are hypocritical not to support this because they allow 16-year-olds to participate in their leadership elections. It is also argued that the approach of all major parties is self-serving, as younger voters are more likely to support left-wing parties and remain in the EU, and less likely to support right-wing parties and leave the EU.
[58] On Monday, March 5, 2018, the Maltese Parliament voted unanimously in favour of a constitutional amendment lowering the official voting age from 18 to 16, making Malta the second EU country to lower the voting age to 16. [41] During the debates in the Youth Parliament on October 30, 2009 in the House of Commons, “Votes at 16” was debated and young people in this age group voted overwhelmingly in favour. In April 2015, the Labour Party announced that it would support this policy if it won an absolute majority in the 2015 general election,[55] which it did not do. Before the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945, the voting age was 21 or older in almost every country. In 1946, Czechoslovakia became the first state to lower the voting age to 20, and by 1968 a total of 17 countries had lowered the voting age. [2] Many countries, particularly in Western Europe, lowered the voting age to 18 in the 1960s and 1970s, starting with the United Kingdom (1969)[3] with the United States (26th Amendment) (1971), Canada, West Germany (1972), Australia (1974), France (1974) and others that soon followed. Until the end of the 20th century, 18 was by far the most common voting age. However, some countries have an electoral age of 20 or more, and some countries have a lower voting age of 16 or 17. [4] It has been argued that if young men could be drafted into the war at the age of 18, they should be able to vote at 18.
[5] To vote in France, they must register on a supplementary voters list at any time of the year. Below is a table with all countries that have a law that makes voting compulsory. The first column lists the name of the country, the second column the type of sanctions that the country in question imposes on non-voters, and the third column provides information on the extent to which compulsory voting laws are applied in practice. The National Assembly for Wales passed the Senedd and Election (Wales) Act on 27 November 2019. [64] A vote in favour of abolishing this right was rejected by 41 votes to 11.