Should 16-year-olds be able to vote?

I think even 12 is a good age to vote, the younger one learns the better !

True, at 16 you can go to work, start paying taxes and start living independently through your hard earned earnings. You can even join the army.

16 years olds are therefore more than deserving of their own vote.

I'm 18 and I think that 18 is too young to vote. You need to have lived without your parents for a few years in my opinion. 21 sounds like a reasonable minimum.

Well I shall have to go against the grain and say yes it should be. Those who are 16 and aren't interested in politics will most likely not vote. Those who are interested and do understand will get to vote. Ignorance to politics is not something that is limited to 16 and 17 year old only. There are so many older people who are also completely ignorant. Surely if your logic is to stop ignorant people from getting the vote, you would be better off basing suffrage upon IQ

I think there is too much negativity towards young people and everyone assumes that they are all uneducated and ignorant. I wouldn't agree with this and I think that there are many intelligent 16 year old more than capable of making good political decisions. Also, currently in politics, the baby boomer generation wields so much political power due to having large numbers who vote and obviously all political parties prioritise trying to appease the baby boomers generation. More young people from our generation should help make us a larger and more important demographic which would get politicans to recognise and to take more seriously issues effecting our generation as a whole.

I'm 18 and I think that 18 is too young to vote. You need to have lived without your parents for a few years in my opinion. 21 sounds like a reasonable minimum.

At 16 you CAN go to university. I have a friend who skipped to grades in primary hence finished early.
It's irrelevant though. Most might not go to university at 16 but you WILL in two years when the prices would have already been changed.
It's just a small example.

At 16, you CAN pay tax, you CAN go to University, you CAN do a lot of things.

The reality is that virtually all 16 year olds do not do any of those things.

Quite frankly, since they contribute zero to the system and are effectively leechers, they have no right to tell other people to pay more money into the system.

But i could use that argument to say ten year olds should vote. After i remember i was interested in politics at 10, and "those who aren't interested in politics at 10 won't vote". I would disagree with that statement, as i would argue those who are misinformed about politics will still vote, but will simply vote for the wrong reasons. I think the point you raised is a problem applicable to all arbitrary age limits, but i think its fair to say we have to draw the line somewhere, and i really dont think that 18 is unreasonable.

I agree that we have to draw the line somewhere, but I disagree with the reasoning a lot of people provide within this thread. Most responses so far in this thread have been that 16 year olds are ignorant ergo 16 years olds shouldn't vote. If this is the logic we should follow, then surely we should base suffrage upon IQ (not a perfect way of measuring lack of ignorance but shall suffice for this example) as many older people of voting age are also ignorant.

Obviously you are implying the Argument of the Beard or the Continuum Fallacy, whereby it is impossible to draw a line between X and Y. My main reasoning was less based upon the case of ignorance but upon the fact that the generation that represents the baby boomers wield more political clout due to their numbers. The increase in numbers of voters within the demographic representing us through the extension of suffrage to those who are 16 and 17 years old would get politicans to recognise and to take more seriously issues effecting our generation as a whole.

I was merely claiming that denying 16 year olds the vote based upon ignorance isn't a proper argument and one can easily construct a 'Reductio ad Absurdum' argument, which you did in your case of the 10 year old you, and thus prove ignorance and age to be unrelated factors which do not help us solve the problem as to where the arbitrary age limit should be placed along the continuum.