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A CONTRADICTION?: Recruits at the Basic Military Training Centre taking the Pledge. An argument for lowering the voting age is that we cannot tell our 18-year-olds they are mature enough to kill enemy combatants, yet are too immature to vote. -- ST FILE PHOTO
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A RECENT public forum about youth concerns raised the issue of lowering the voting age to 18. This would empower citizens born between 1991 and 1993 to vote in the next General Election due in 2011.
Only a handful of countries still make their citizens wait till they are 21 before they can vote. Besides Singapore, the other countries on the list are the Central African Republic, Fiji, Gabon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau and Tonga.
Brunei has no suffrage and Indonesia's voting age is 17. So the voting age in Asean countries, except Singapore and Malaysia, is 18. In fact, that is the voting age in most nations, even Iran.
In 2002, Morocco lowered its voting age from 20 to 18. In Cuba, Brazil, Nicaragua and, from March last year, in Austria, citizens can vote at 16. Austria's move, its government said, reflected the need for political institutions to engage the young 'more robustly' in view of a greying population.
Beginning in 2010, Japan will lower its voting age from 20 to 18 for national referendums on constitutional amendments. In February, the opposition Democratic Party began pushing to make 18 the voting age for all elections. Perhaps, it reckons that as a centre-left party, it would probably appeal to teenage voters.
But it certainly didn't work out that way for the Democrats in the United States. Impelled by the powerful student-led anti-
Vietnam War movement, Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1970. The vote, the US Senate said at the time, would give the young 'a direct, constructive and democratic channel for making their views felt and for giving them a responsible stake in the future of the nation'.
It was widely assumed that youth turnout would help the Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. But he was trounced by the Republican contender Richard Nixon. So conservative parties need not fear that the young will reflexively vote liberal.
If most nations think it wise to enfranchise their 18- to 20-year-olds, why does Singapore tarry? The prime argument here for lowering the voting age has been that if 18-year-olds can be called up for National Service in the armed forces, they should also have the right to vote. At a minimum, Singaporean males - and females who volunteer for the armed forces - should be given the vote at 18. During World War I, Britain gave its active servicemen the vote at 19, against 21 for its other citizens.
We cannot tell our 18-year-olds they are mature enough to kill enemy combatants - and be held responsible as adults if they commit murder - yet are too immature to vote.
All sides agree that maturity matters. In its 2004 public consultation to consider lowering the voting age from 18 to 16, Britain's Electoral Commission pointed out three aspects of the maturity argument.
First, younger people may be swayed by others because of ignorance or intimidation. Second, they might vote for parties without grasping the implications of their proposed policies. And third, they may not be sufficiently intellectually developed.
As to being swayed by family and friends because of ignorance, this applies to adults too. As to the young being more susceptible to coercion and intimidation, the Constitution does not require voters to prove the absence of such influences or be physically mature. We do not deny the old and frail or the physically disabled the vote out of similar concerns.
As to understanding complex public policy issues, how many people aged 21 and above grasp the complexity of, say, Singapore's transport policy or the recent CPF changes? Our political affiliations are influenced by our families because we tend to share the values and norms of those whom we love and trust.
And as for intellectual and analytical abilities, note that those 21 or older don't have to prove they have these qualities. We don't even deny the vote to the senile or the psychotic who live outside institutionalised care. Of course, we would prefer voters to be well informed about the issues. But how much knowledge they should have before they have the vote is not a judgment society can make.
Naysayers urge 18- to 20-year-olds to just wait and vote the next time round. That is akin to telling the poor they can't vote but if they work hard and earn enough, they will be able to vote in a few years' time.
Offering the young rights will encourage them to behave responsibly. If they think their opinions and actions will not make a difference to themselves and society, why would they bother to think through the issues? Conversely, if they know their decisions matter, they would try to make rational and informed choices.
The authorities lament that our young do not seem to be engaged politically. If so, the cause might not just be apathy. After all, the young tend to participate in community activities more often than older people do. Could they, instead, be just alienated from existing political institutions? Perhaps they perceive the system to be inattentive to their concerns since they cannot vote?
Giving the young the vote would be a move of great symbolic import to 'prove' to them the system's sincerity when it calls on them to participate in our democracy.
Perhaps a post-1965 Member of Parliament might initiate the debate to enfranchise these trustees of our posterity.
andyho@sph.com.sg
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