Great Britain to reduce the voting age to 16 before the next national elections, the government announces

London – Great Britain will reduce the voting age from 18 to 16 in the next national elections as part of the measures to increase democratic participation, the government announced Thursday. The Labor Party of the Izquierdo Center committed before it was chosen in July 2024 to reduce the voting age for the elections to the Parliament of Great Britain. Scotland and Wales have already allowed young people aged 16 and 17 to vote in local and regional elections.

Great Britain will join a brief list of countries where the voting age is 16 years, including Austria, Brazil and Ecuador. A handful of European Union countries, including Belgium, Germany and Malta, allow 16 -year -olds to vote in the elections to the European Parliament, but not their national legislatures.

The measure comes next to broader reforms that include the hardening of campaign rules of the campaign to prevent ghost companies with an unclear property of donating political parties. The Minister of Democracy, Rushanara Ali, said that change would strengthen the safeguards against foreign interference in British politics. There will also be harder sentences for people convicted of intimidating political candidates.

Besides, Prime Minister Keir StarmerThe government of ‘S said that it will introduce the automatic registration of voters and allow voters to use bank cards as a form of identification in electoral schools.

The previous conservative government introduced a requirement for voters to show the identification of photos in 2022, a measure that would fight fraud. Critics argued that it could deprive millions of voters, particularly young people, the poor and members of ethnic minorities. The law ironically caught the man who had helped take her to books, when former prime minister Boris Johnson was rejected From your local voting station last year after forgetting to bring your photo identification.

The Vigilance Agency of the elections of Great Britain, the Electoral Commission, estimates that around 750,000 people did not vote in last year’s elections because they lacked identification.

The participation in the 2024 elections was 59.7%, the lowest level in more than two decades.

Harry Quilter-Pinner, head of the group of leftist experts, the Public Policy Research Institute said the changes were “the largest reform for our electoral system since 1969”, when the voting age was reduced to 18 from 21.

The changes must be approved by Parliament, but Starmer’s Labor Party currently has an overwhelming majority of the seats, so it is likely to happen easily. The next national elections must be held by 2029, but in theory, it could be called before by the Government.

“For too long, public trust in our democracy has been damaged and faith in our institutions has allowed us to decrease,” said Vice Prime Minister Angela Rayner. “We are taking measures to break the barriers for participation that will ensure that more people have the opportunity to participate in the United Kingdom democracy.”

Stuart News, professor of politics at the University of Exeter who studied youth vote, said it is “far from being clear” if reducing the voting age actually increases youth participation.

“It is correct to help young people to be heard,” he said. “But there are other measures that are more effective for young people to vote, particularly those of the poorest origins that have, with much, the least likely to vote, such as reinforcing the citizenship curriculum or expanding the provision of volunteering programs in schools.”

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