Should 16-year-olds get the vote?

A motion in Toronto could open to door to extending voting rights in the city – and beyond. An Interview with Vote16's Aleksi Toiviainen.

To the left, the country’s biggest 18+ club. Source: Phil Hearing on Unsplash.

Toronto City Council is considering a measure that would lower the voting age to 16 for neighbourhood polls. The motion has the support of several youth advocates, community groups, and democracy activists and organizations. It’s also a potential step along the road to broader voting rights for youth in Toronto – and throughout Canada.

This week, I speak with Aleksi Toiviainen of Vote16 Toronto. He makes the case for lowering the voting age for youth who are affected by the decisions of elected representatives, but barred from casting a ballot for, or against, them.

David Moscrop

What prompted the campaign to lower the voting age in Toronto, and what made neighborhood polls a focal point?

Aleksi Toiviainen

Toronto is one of the few cities in Canada with a neighborhood poll system. Other cities in Canada have various mechanisms for consultation and gathering community feedback, but this is one of those policies that a city can take on and demonstrate the capacity of 16- and 17-year-olds.

We see it as a way to build an understanding among the public that this is an actionable policy for more vibrant democracy. And it’s within our jurisdiction. The City Council can't change the voting age for municipal elections. The power for local election laws, including ranked ballots or the voting age, are controlled by the province. And so even though we've reached a point where 11 municipalities across the country have passed motions in support of Vote16, or at least studying the policy, Toronto is in a position to actually enact this change.

This has been a national campaign for about the past four or five years. I've personally been working on the issue for the past six years, since I was 15. I'm 21 now, and I've stuck with it the whole time. The fact that we recently saw a pretty significant success recently in the House of Commons, where all the New Democrats, all of the Bloc, both of the Greens, and 20 Liberals spoke or voted in favor of a bill to lower the voting age, told us that there was growing appetite and momentum for an issue like this.

Moscrop

Have you found politicians receptive to your case for lowering the voting age?

Toiviainen

Based on the public debate we saw, I think councillors seem to be largely convinced on the merits of this. They recognize the importance of youth engagement and the importance of protecting local democracy. The questions that remain are around implementation: for example, the best way to add 16- and 17-year-olds to voter lists, since right now we don't have a database for that. Now that this motion has been passed, the City Clerk's Office will be researching the best way to do so.

Fortunately, we've seen a lot of councillors speak very positively about stronger voices for young people. Councillors Diane Saxe, Lily Cheng, and Amber Morley all gave really promising and positive speeches when this was being debated in council chambers. Now we're optimistic about our chances when this comes to a vote on actual enactment in the next few months.

Moscrop

What’s the end game of this campaign? Is the goal to see 16- and 17-year-olds vote at the municipal level? The provincial level? The federal level?

Toiviainen

We're active all over the place. This is a growing wave across Canada. We've got campaigns on the go in Halton Hills, in Winnipeg, in Surrey, in West Vancouver, in the Yukon, and in the Northwest Territories. We're launching one in Vaughan. There might be one in Ottawa in as well. The thinking is that with a few more municipalities on the map, we'll see growing interest from provincial parliamentarians and perhaps even the federal government.

Again, most of our work right now is focused on key municipalities. That's where our volunteers are based, but we are also getting more people. Our focus is on municipal councils and getting them to either pass motions – as they've done in 11 places so far – or enact changes to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to participate in age-restricted consultations like Toronto has with neighborhood polls.

The long-term goal, of course, is to lower the voting age nationally, and I think we're heading in that direction. As of today, 17 countries have a voting age of 16 for at least one level of government; just to cite a few, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Scotland, Wales have this, as do several cities in the US.

In the recent US election, Albany, California passed a ballot measure to lower the voting age to 16, becoming the 13th city in the country to do so. So, this is something that Canada can't turn away from. Sooner or later the overwhelming evidence showing that 16-year-olds are sufficiently competent, ready, and eager to vote will come to bear, and this policy will become the norm.

Moscrop

When you meet resistance to lowering the voting age, what are the arguments that opponents take?

Toiviainen

The one I hear most often is just that they're not ready. Fortunately, we have enough research and evidence at this point to make that objection pretty much laughable. And that evidence comes not only from those 17 countries I mentioned — who have studied this and found in every case where the policy is enacted and the research is done that 16- and 17-year-olds turn out at higher rates than older first-time voters — but also research from cognitive science, which shows that the specific mental capacity required for voting matures by 16 years of age.

Canada has also done research on the political knowledge of young people and has found that 16- and 17-year-olds may know just as much if not more than older voters on matters like who the candidates are, what the campaign promises are, what the platforms are, and who the parties are.

This overwhelming amount of research is contrasted with very little on the other side. In the history of study of this policy, there's little, if anything, to suggest that 16- and 17-year-olds voting would in any way have a negative effect. In fact, Austria, Belgium and Germany have all specifically conducted studies on the quality of 16- and 17-year-olds’s vote choice and the way they make decisions, and they find that they do so with adult-levels of capacity.

So, it seems to me that a lot of people who have an objection to this policy are opposed out of some instinctual or first-blush look at it. But we've also found that the more we talk to people and the more we outline the international experience and the research at home, persuading people is pretty easy. It seems like more and more people are recognizing that it's time for this, and objections usually fade away after a good, solid conversation.

Moscrop

Are there civic benefits or personal benefits you can point to that are particularly compelling?

Toiviainen

This is where research is only starting to emerge. The broader, non-electoral benefits haven't been studied as closely, but I can certainly tell you that when 16- and 17-year-olds were given the right to vote in Scotland, for instance, they talked about politics more with their friends, their classmates, their teachers, and their parents. In some cases, they even pulled their parents out to vote when they otherwise wouldn't have, because they had just spent a day in their civics class talking about how they were going to vote, and it would be crazy for their parents not to do the same.

So that's the kind of thing that we see, young people becoming more aware of their power, their ability to affect change. That can spill over into all kinds of areas, such as greater party or group membership or a stronger willingness to participate in various forms of volunteering or giving back to the community.

I am really optimistic that seeing a lower vote age enacted in Canada will help people, especially because I worry that a lot of young people feel this perpetual sense of burnout and dejection and hopelessness in the face of all the policies that are to their detriment. I think that if young people felt greater power in their political lives, they might likewise feel it personally, and that'll do a lot for our mental health as well.

Moscrop

Young people are affected by decisions made by politicians but they can’t participate in choosing those politicians. How important is it that younger voters are given the chance to make that choice?

Toiviainen

Low youth turnout is endemic across Canada right now at all levels of government, but it's especially bad at the municipal level. Toronto's last full election in 2022 had an overall turnout rate of 29%, and, like I mentioned before, when young people don't show up, our issues don't get the attention that those of other ages get. A lot of young people don't vote because they feel like they don't have the knowledge or the confidence to make political decisions. So, that's what this motion is for. We need to do more to make sure young people feel comfortable with political decisions in the familiar environment of their home neighborhood.

With a voting-age change, 16-year-olds would get the chance to make decisions that affect their local area. They would also form the habit of voting in their community at a time when that their parents or guardians can teach them a little something about democracy.

Currently, 18- or 19-years old is a terrible time to start voting: you're going off to post-secondary school or you're perhaps starting a job, maybe moving across the country These are not ideal circumstances under which to have young people voting. You don't have a stake in this brand-new town that you've just moved to. Voting at a younger age makes far more sense.

And, again, there’s a lot at stake. Young people are not doing well in Canada right now, and people are going to jump at anything we can do to make sure their voices are stronger. People are going to jump at that. They already have.