Voting at 16: more than just a symbolic gesture?

In November 2024, 200 young Swiss gathered in Bern for the federal parliament’s annual “youth session”. Keystone / Marcel Bieri

Should 16-year-olds be given the vote? In Switzerland, the idea is never far from the political agenda – and is usually roundly rejected. Globally, the impact of such a move on youth participation might not be huge, a new index suggests.

In 1979, a slim majority of Swiss said ‘no’ to something taken for granted today – voting rights for 18-year-olds. Some of the arguments heard at the time will sound a bit stuffy to modern ears. “Young people today are certainly more uninhibited and precocious than they once were, for example in sexual matters – but that is no proof that they are more mature politically or in character”, one Senator judged. The age remained at 20.

But history was heading elsewhere. Already in 1969, the UK had lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The US did likewise in 1971. Countries including Australia, Sweden, and France followed the trend in the 1970s. And in Switzerland, after various cantons adjusted their voting age downwards in the 1980s, another national vote was held in 1991; this time it passed with a majority of over 70%.

Hitting the floor

Three decades later, debates about the “proper” age continue – but the floor seems to have been reached for now, at least in Switzerland. The idea of letting 16- and 17-year-olds vote pops up regularly – and is invariably batted back down. Parliament buried a proposal last year, while eight cantons, most recently Lucerne, have rejected itExternal link in public votes. Canton Glarus became the only exception in 2007.

Why is the idea such a non-starter? A new studyExternal link by the Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA) suggests that it’s not down to the political maturity of youths themselves. According to their survey data, the civic self-perception of 16- and 17-year-old citizens in Switzerland is virtually the same as for 18- to 25-year-olds: underage youths are just as keen on political participation, just as exposed to political debate, and consume even more political information than their slightly older peers.

The results were surprising to him, says study co-author Robin Gut. “We assumed 16- and 17-year-old citizens would report less political interest because they aren’t yet eligible to vote. But in the end, there was actually no, or very little, variation between age groups.”

Test cases

But while the study suggests young citizens are subjectively “ready” and interested, it’s still not clear to what extent they actually would get out and vote if they could. A 2014 survey found that a majority of 16- and 17-year-olds in Switzerland were in favour of keeping the voting age as it was. In Glarus, where the political system is marked by the idiosyncratic Landsgemeinde format (see below), anecdotal reports of youth involvement since 2007 are positive. But Gut’s ZDA colleagues have also estimated that young people in the canton vote less often than older people, especially on local issues.

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Further afield, Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Ecuador and Malta have lowered the voting age to 16 at the national level. Various European states have done the same at the local or regional level. Studies about how it has panned out are generally positive. In Scotland, newly enfranchised 16- and 17-year-olds voted massively in the 2014 independence referendum and have since remained committedExternal link. Austrian 16- and 17-year-olds also tend to vote more than older first-time voters, and they also don’t vote considerably differently, the Council of Europe writes in a reportExternal link.

Reluctant voters

However, making such a reform is not a magic solution to youth political disenchantment more generally. The recent Global Youth Participation IndexExternal link, which analyses 141 countries across various socio-economic, civic, and political indicators, doesn’t weight a lower voting age as particularly important – and none of the top 10 countries allow 16-year-olds to vote. Overall, says report contributor Kirstie Dobbs from Merrimack College, the “elections” dimension was one of the weakest in the whole index.

Youths – in this case loosely defined as mid-teens to late-20s – are “just not so drawn to elections”, she says.

Dobbs lists a few reasons for this. One is that young people simply have other priorities, like finding a professional and personal path. Another is trust in electoral procedures. Previous research Dobbs did in post-Arab Spring Tunisia, for example, found that young people were politically motivated, but viewed elections as tainted by corruption. Even in an established democracy like Austria, the Youth Participation Index writes that the upside of a low voting age is offset by “increasing decline of trust in political parties”. Austria was 14th in the ranking.

In this context, Dobbs thinks lowering the voting age doesn’t make a huge difference, at least on its own. “It’s a great policy start, but the impact depends on other things around it,” she says. Family culture, education, and social capital (how embedded are you in a community) are vital. Politics and political parties also still fail to reach young people digitally, she says. Meanwhile, debates about voting age are far removed from issues like mental health, Dobbs adds.

“How can you encourage somebody to go out and vote if you can’t even get them out of bed in the morning?”

Democratic inclusion and justice

Gut from the ZDA agrees that lowering the age is not a “game-changer”. This also applies to its potential impact on votes in Switzerland. He calculates that 16- and 17-year-olds would make up 2.4% of an expanded Swiss electorate. This is a sizeable chunk, but not likely to swing ballots on issues where the older electorate prevails, like pension reform. At most, young people could have an impact in very tight situations. For example, the 2020 decision – passed by 50.1% – to buy new fighter jets, which is still a hot issue.

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Yet overall, Gut argues that from a scientific perspective “nothing speaks against a lowering of the voting age”. Barriers are political rather than empirical, he says: the issue is just not a priority compared to security policy, climate policy, pension reform, or healthcare. Young people also lack a strong lobby and funding; there is also no cross-party consensus – the issue is mainly a left-wing one.

As the population gets older, voting age is also becoming more important from the point of view of democratic justice, Gut adds. On one hand, lowering it would be a “signal” to young people that they are taken seriously. On the other, he says it is increasingly problematic that older voters hold such power of decision over younger ones. “In the medium to long-term – with the median voting age heading towards 60 – we have to tackle this,” he says.

Of course, lowering the age wouldn’t reverse this – given demographic trends, it would only slow it slightly. To really avoid a looming gerontocracy, Gut floats other ideas: family voting rights, for example, or the need for ballots to also secure a majority of under-40-year-olds to pass. Of course, Gut admits, such ideas have an even lower chance of success than the idea to lower the voting age in the first place.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl/sb