What we learned at the Vote 16 World Forum
The inaugural Vote16 World event just took place - here's what happened
Dear Friends,
I’m Aleksi, a high school student in Toronto and I’m proud to be a leader in the Vote 16 Canada and Vote 16 World movements.
Thanks to one organizer’s excellent emailing skills (mine!), members of Vote16 Canada, Vote16USA, the Secondary Students’ Union of Northern Ireland, Make it 16 New Zealand, the British Youth Council, and the German non-partisan thinktank d|part were all in attendance to bridge international gaps and share what we’ve all been working on.
The campaigns present swapped tips, the enthusiastic audience got answers to all their questions, and everyone gained new depth to their convictions about this crucial issue. The rights of young people are being withheld! Someone’s got to do something! Oh right, we’re doing something.
Yeah, we get signal boosted by federal senators, no big deal.
You can watch the whole session here, note that someone’s unforeseeable technical difficulty (mine!) means that the video portion doesn’t work until 26 minutes in.
Below are the highlights of what we got out the forum, and what you should be looking out for in the coming months from the Vote 16 World movement!
Now that the hallucinated email inboxes have faded from my vision, I can look with pride on what we’ve managed to start by bring together these exceptional people. Momentum is growing, lowering the voting age is becoming an ever more serious movement.
To sum up, I can only say one thing: Watch this space.
Best,
Aleksi
Vote 16 World Updates!
Vote 16 Canada
Strategic Director Dave Meslin, along with Member of Parliament Taylor Bachrach and Senator Marilou McPhedran, announced Canada’s Vote16 Week, a week dedicated to the promotion of two pieces of Vote16 legislation currently at debate stage in the legislature.
MP Bachrach’s bill has multipartisan support from four of Canada’s major parties, not to mention support from pro-youth organizations like the Young Canadians’ Parliament and Children First Canada. He’s optimistic that this bill will be receive majority support in the House to bring it to committee.
Senator McPhedran’s bill recently reached debate stage in the Senate, just like the Vote16 bill she introduced in the previous session of parliament which reached Senate committee stage. Both pieces of legislation are being supported by Senator McPhedran’s youth advisory and the Canadian Council of Young Feminists. Vote16 Canada is working to strengthen grassroots involvement, and the youth have their backs.
Vote16USA
Brandon Klugman leads the Vote16USA campaign, which runs a three pronged attack: providing information about the merits of and support for Vote16, supporting local and state-level youth-led campaigns with their experience, and promoting the issue nationally through media attention. The United States has seen some of the most prolific Vote16 campaigns in the world, with 7 cities that have either lowered the voting age or have approved the policy but haven’t yet implemented it.
British Youth Council
Halima Yusuf, Policy and Public Affairs Assistant for the British Youth Council, walked us through how the Votes at 16 project has been reinvigorated thanks to a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. The grant, and the parallel jolt of enthusiasm for the cause, has fueled the BYC to back Scotland’s and Wales’s successful Vote16 efforts, to found an All Party Parliamentary Group, and to get all major UK parties to come out in favour of the policy.
Over the next few months, the BYC will be implementing Youth Action Groups to lead local actions and campaigns. They’ll be hosting events to stimulate engagement in Westminster, and the Tories will be brought on board with a new Conservative case for Votes at 16.
Make it 16 New Zealand
Sanat Singh is the Co-Director of Make it 16 NZ, the organization that has been fighting for a lowered voting age through the less conventional system: the courts. The New Zealand Bill of Rights protects against age discrimination for anyone above 16, yet the country’s voting age is 18. Unconstitutional? Yeah.
Sanat showed how the Māori values and philosophy, which are often employed in New Zealand campaigning, are imbued within his organization. Connection to other people, and to nature, applies to their campaign because of the common thread of political issues young people face. The common connection being a desire to strengthen democracy. Empowering people at the flax roots gives power to local communities to find their own motivations for supporting Vote16. Māori storytelling has inspired Make It 16 to base their campaign around narratives.
This philosophy has worked for them! Soon, they will be getting a hearing date from the Supreme Court of New Zealand, which they hope will lead to a formal declaration that the voting rights of 16-17s are being breached.
Secondary Students’ Union of Northern Ireland
Ellen Taylor is the Community Relations Officer for SSUNI, which represents over 35,000 students in post-primary schools across Northern Ireland. Though Northern Ireland voted in favour of lowering the voting age, the country’s lack of authority to set its own voting age (the decision comes down to Westminster) meant that the voting age remained at 18. This, alongside substantial support from the students they represent, has motivated SSUNI to push for more political participation and education for young people.
Ellen brought SSUNI into the UK’s Votes at 16 Coalition, bringing them into current plans on building local advocacy chapters. Excitingly, SSUNI plans to stage protests soon and engage with politicians more directly on this issue.
d|part – Jan Eichhorn
Man, what isn’t this guy doing? For those who aren’t familiar, Dr. Eichhorn is basically the academic rockstar of the Vote16 World. His academic credentials in political participation have allowed him to speak as an expert at countless committee hearings, workshops, and press conferences about what we can learn from places that have lowered the voting age. Recently, Dr. Eichhorn has been traveling through Canada and the US to meet with researchers, campaigners, and legislators. The picture above is him at the University of Maryland, talking about Vote16’s impacts on political participation.
At the forum, he shared insights as to why Vote16 was such a success in Scotland:
Public support went from 30% to 60% after the first election was held with the lowered voting age, because people saw young people took full advantage of the opportunity
Youth organizations used that election as a new environment for advocacy, turned schools into radiant hubs for political participation
Youth networks, like the Scottish Youth Parliament, connected with local advocacy groups to generate support for Vote16 and simultaneously connect those advocacy groups with parliamentarians who could work with them on their issues.
Since the late 1990's, Alex [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-koroknay-palicz-2a01553/ ] has been organizing to expand voting rights to younger people. He spent 12+ years leading the National Youth Suffrage Association (USA) [https://www.youthrights.org/issues/voting-age/].
Should Children be Given the Vote? - Canadian Economist Miles Corak at TEDxWaterloo 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anYFFlOtZKo