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A private bill to give 16-year olds the vote is back in Parliament (piefed.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/canadapolitics@lemmy.ca
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https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/bill/C-210/first-reading

Elections Canada research shows most adult voters oppose the measure: "Seven in ten respondents, 72 percent, disagreed."

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[–] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A quiet benefit of lowering the voter age imo is that it allows families to vote together (physically not ideologically) while they still definitely share a home. This allows a culture of voting to grow which I think could really help voter turn out in the long term.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    It could also lead to abusive situations where a child is restricted from certain freedoms or punished for voting for the wrong candidate. Children could be coerced into voting for whatever candidate their parents want. Maybe dad thinks the cons are gonna give him a big tax break but the kid thinks the NDP will bring rent prices down by the time they want to move out for college.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I can certainly understand your concern, and I think the definitive way to solve that is to have voting integrated into schools (which are often polling stations already)., but i think that doesn't make sense until voting age is lowered.

    That said I think our system is already fairly resistant to coercion. If dad says vote CPC kids says "yes sir" and votes NDP and there is no possible way for dad to know the kid is lying.

    I'll point out that there was a similar concern during suffrage and it turned out to be a non-issue.

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